"Collaboration" appears to be a popular trend in business and education as it is discussed more and more frequently in publications. One of the problems associated with collaboration is the lack of clear definition among similar terms such as cooperation, team effort, and partnerships. This paper briefly reviews the literature related to the concept of collaboration and adopts a three-level definition among the terms collaboration, coordination, and cooperation. Cooperation forms the base, coordination forms the second level, and collaboration, the most complex of the three, forms the third level. Each level is generically higher according to the complexity of the process. All three levels must interrelate. When collaboration is viewed as a current organizational structure in education, collaborations are defined as organizational and interorganizational structures where resources, power, and authority are shared in order to achieve common goals that could not be accomplished singly. Another problem related to collaboration is the future. Often the future or success of a collaborative effort rests on the critical issue of ethics. When values collide, collaborations often falter or fail because there was no consensus of ethical guidelines established by the participants. A model to help establish guidelines is suggested which provides a check list of items to be considered, includes a sample of ethical guidelines, and offers a self-explanatory generic model for self-evaluation of ethical issues. Contains 25 references. (Author/DK)