The need of interoperability among different components and the need of exchanging information outside institutional and sometime outside national boundaries have increased awareness of the role that attributes play. The SCHema for ACademia, SCHAC, is the result of the work carried out in the area of attributes coordination to address inter-institutional data exchange, recognised by the TF-EMC2 group as a real need. SCHAC aims to define and promote common schemas in the field of higher education to facilitate inter-institutional data exchange. SCHAC is a collection of schemas that aim to facilitate interoperability among those institutions that decide to use them. SCHAC does not aim to replace the national schemas, but rather it aims to provide a common framework on top of the various national schema.