A consortium (pl. consortiums or consortia) is an association of two or more individuals companies organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal. Consortium is a Latin word meaning "partnership" "association" or "society" and derives from consors ("shared in property") itself from con- ("together") and sors ("fate"). The Big Ten Academic Alliance in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic U.S. Claremont Colleges consortium in Southern California Five College Consortium in Massachusetts and Consórcio Nacional Honda are among the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the world. The Big Ten Academic Alliance formerly known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation includes the members of the Big Ten athletic conference. The participants in Five Colleges Inc. are: Amherst College Hampshire College Mount Holyoke College Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Another example of a successful consortium is the Five Colleges of Ohio of Ohio: Oberlin College Ohio Wesleyan University Kenyon College College of Wooster and Denison University. The aforementioned Claremont Consortium (known as the Claremont Colleges) consists of Pomona College Claremont Graduate University Scripps College Claremont McKenna College Harvey Mudd College Pitzer College and Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the universities to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources.