Association_of_American_Universities

Association of American Universities

Association of American Universities

Organization of leading research universities


The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 71 public and private universities in the United States as well as two universities in Canada. AAU membership is by invitation only and requires an affirmative vote of three-quarters of current members.

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Organization

The AAU was founded on February 28, 1900, by a group of 14 Doctor of Philosophy degree-granting universities[lower-alpha 1] in the United States to strengthen and standardize American doctoral programs.[1] American universities—starting with University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University in 1876—were adopting the research-intensive German model of higher education. Lack of standardization damaged European universities' opinions of their American counterparts and many American students attended graduate school in Europe instead of staying in the U.S. The presidents of Harvard University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California sent a letter of invitation to nine other universities—Clark University, Catholic University of America, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University—to meet in Chicago in February 1900 to promote and raise standards.[4] The AAU's founding members elected Harvard's Charles William Eliot as the association's first president[1] and Stanford's David Starr Jordan as its first chairman.[5]

In 1914, the AAU began accrediting undergraduate education at its member and other schools. German universities used the "AAU Accepted List" to determine whether a college's graduates were qualified for graduate programs. Regional accreditation agencies existed in the U.S. by the 1920s, and the AAU ended accrediting schools in 1948.[6]

For its first six decades, the AAU functioned as a club for the presidents and deans of elite research universities to informally discuss educational matters, and its day-to-day operations were managed by an executive secretary.[7] In the 1970s, the AAU shifted to a role of active advocacy on behalf of its members' interests; dues were raised, more staff members were hired, and its chief executive was given the title of president and the duty of becoming far more publicly visible than his predecessors.[8]

Today, the AAU consists of 71 U.S. and Canadian universities of varying sizes and missions that share a commitment to research. The organization's primary purpose is to provide a forum for the development and implementation of institutional and national policies in order to strengthen programs in academic research, scholarship, and education at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels.

Benefits

The largest attraction of the AAU for many schools, especially nonmembers, is prestige. Since the AAU's founding, it has "been a grouping of the elite in the American university world", and "[n]ew presidents of nonmember universities often list gaining admission to the AAU as a goal of their administration."[7] For example, in 2010 the chancellor of nonmember North Carolina State University described it as "the pre-eminent research-intensive membership group. To be a part of that organization is something N.C. State aspires to."[9] A spokesman for nonmember University of Connecticut called it "perhaps the most elite organization in higher education. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find a major research university that didn't want to be a member of the AAU."[10] In 2012, the newly elected chancellor of University of Massachusetts Amherst, a nonmember of AAU, reaffirmed the objective of elevating the campus to AAU standards and the hope of becoming a member in the near future, and called it a distinctive status.[11] Because of the lengthy and difficult entrance process, boards of trustees, state legislators, and donors often see membership as evidence of the quality of a university.[9]

The AAU acts as a lobbyist at its headquarters in Washington, DC, for research and higher education funding and for policy and regulatory issues affecting research universities. The association holds two meetings annually, both in Washington. Separate meetings are held for university presidents, provosts, and other officials. Because the meetings are private, they offer the opportunity for discussion without media coverage. Prominent government officials, business leaders, and others often speak to the groups.[9]

Presidents

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Statistics

As of 2004, AAU members accounted for 58 percent[lower-alpha 2] of U.S. universities' research grants and contract income and 52 percent of all doctorates awarded in the United States. Since 1999, 43 percent of all Nobel Prize winners and 74 percent of winners at U.S. institutions have been affiliated with an AAU university. Approximately two-thirds of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2006 Class of Fellows are affiliated with an AAU university. The faculties at AAU universities include 2,993 members of the United States National Academies (82 percent of all members): the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine (2004).[12]

  • Undergraduate students: 1,044,759; 7 percent nationally
  • Undergraduate degrees awarded: 235,328; 17 percent nationally
  • Graduate students: 418,066; 20 percent nationally
  • Master's degrees awarded: 106,971; 19 percent nationally
  • Professional degrees awarded: 20,859; 25 percent nationally
  • Doctorates awarded: 22,747; 52 percent nationally
  • Postdoctoral fellows: 30,430; 67 percent nationally
  • Students studying abroad: 57,205
  • National Merit/Achievement Scholars (2004): 5,434; 63 percent nationally
  • Faculty: approximately 72,000

Membership

AAU membership is by invitation only, which requires an affirmative vote of three-fourths of current members. Invitations are considered periodically, based in part on an assessment of the breadth and quality of university programs of research and graduate education, as well as undergraduate education. The association ranks its members using four criteria: research spending, the percentage of faculty who are members of the National Academies, faculty awards, and citations. Non-member universities whose research and education profile exceeds that of a number of current members may be invited to join the association; current members whose research and education profile falls significantly below that of other current members or below the criteria for admission of new members will be subject to further review and possible discontinuation of membership.[13] A vote by two-thirds of the member institutions can revoke membership for poor rankings.[14][15] As of 2022 annual dues are $139,500.[16] All 69 U.S. members of the AAU are also classified as Highest Research Activity (R1) Universities by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, as are three of the five former AAU members.

Current members

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Former members

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Map of schools

South Florida
South Florida
Arizona State
Arizona State
UC Riverside
UC Riverside
George Washington
George Washington
Miami
Miami
Notre Dame
Notre Dame
Rice
Rice
Tulane
Tulane
Buffalo
Buffalo
Arizona
Arizona
UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley
UCLA
UCLA
Oregon
Oregon
USC
USC
Stanford
Stanford
Washington
Washington
Colorado
Colorado
Texas A&M
Texas A&M
Florida
Florida
Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt
Missouri
Missouri
Penn State
Penn State
Rutgers
Rutgers
Indiana
Indiana
Michigan
Michigan
Michigan State
Michigan State
Ohio State
Ohio State
Illinois
Illinois
Iowa
Iowa
Minnesota
Minnesota
Northwestern
Northwestern
Purdue
Purdue
Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Maryland
Maryland
Kansas
Kansas
Texas
Texas
Ga. Tech
Ga. Tech
Virginia
Virginia
UNC-Chapel Hill
UNC-Chapel Hill
Duke
Duke
Pitt
Pitt
Brown
Brown
Columbia
Columbia
Cornell
Cornell
Penn
Penn
Princeton
Princeton
Yale
Yale
Caltech
Caltech
UC Davis
UC Davis
UC Irvine
UC Irvine
UC San Diego
UC San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Cruz
UC Santa Cruz
Emory
Emory
U. Chicago
U. Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins
Five schools*
Five schools*
Wash U.
Wash U.
NYU
NYU
Stony Brook
Stony Brook
Rochester
Rochester
Case Western
Case Western
Carnegie Mellon
Carnegie Mellon
Dartmouth
Dartmouth
Toronto
Toronto
McGill
McGill
Utah
Utah
A map of the AAU schools, with private schools marked blue and public schools marked red. Five private schools in Greater Boston are not labeled separately due to their close geographic proximity: Boston University, Brandeis, Harvard, MIT, and Tufts.

 

Advocacy

In 2014, the AAU supported the proposed Research and Development Efficiency Act arguing that the legislation "can lead to a long-needed reduction in the regulatory burden currently imposed on universities and their faculty members who conduct research on behalf of the federal government."[39] According to the AAU, "too often federal requirements" for accounting for federal grant money "are ill-conceived, ineffective, and/or duplicative."[39] This wastes the researchers' times and "reduces the time they can devote to discovery and innovation and increases institutional compliance costs."[39]

Similar organizations in other countries

Similar organizations around the world include the Russell Group (United Kingdom), U15 (Germany), League of European Research Universities (Europe), BRICS Universities League (BRICS), Association of East Asian Research Universities (mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), C9 League (China), Group of Eight (Australia), RU11 (Japan), and the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities (Canada).

See also

Notes

  1. Over $15.9 billion: NIH: $9.1 billion, 60 percent of total academic research funding. Research Funding: National Science Foundation: $2.0 billion, 63 percent of total academic research funding Department of Defense: $1.2 billion, 56 percent of total academic research funding Department of Energy: $505.2 million, 63 percent of total academic research funding NASA: $673.2 million, 57 percent of total academic research funding Department of Agriculture: $271.9 million, 41 percent of total academic research funding.
  2. Although Emory shares a joint engineering department with Georgia Tech, the program is accredited through Georgia Tech.[24]
  3. While the funding numbers of the Indiana University School of Medicine are reported through IUB, IUSM is accredited through its main campus at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). After IUPUI is dissolved at the end of the 2023–24 academic year, IUSM's accreditation will be through the newly established Indiana University Indianapolis.
  4. USDA has confirmed that MIT is eligible to apply for grants that are available only to land-grant institutions, the State of Massachusetts chooses to allocate its federal capacity appropriations to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.[26]
  5. The University of California, Berkeley is closely tied with the LCME-accredited University of California, San Francisco, which only provides graduate-level courses. The two universities share a joint program
  6. The University of Colorado School of Medicine is affiliated with the University of Colorado Boulder, a LCME accredited school of medicine.
  7. UNC-Chapel Hill offers an ABET accredited Biomedical Engineering degree jointly with North Carolina State University. The engineering courses are offered through the NC State College of Engineering, while the medical courses are offered through UNC-Chapel Hill.[30]
  8. Departed as a result of "institutional emphases and energies" that differed from the other AAU members.
  9. Departed because of a shift in the AAU's emphasis to large research universities.
  10. Iowa State departed claiming that AAU's internal ranking indicators unfairly favor institutions with high levels of NIH funding and noted that its strength is not in biomedical research because the school does not have a medical school.
  11. Because of a dispute over how to count nonfederal grants, Syracuse voluntarily withdrew from the AAU in 2011. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that after "it became clear that Syracuse wouldn't meet the association's revised membership criteria, university officials decided that they would leave the organization voluntarily, rather than face a vote like Nebraska's, and notified the leadership of their intentions."
  12. Removed from the AAU. Chancellor Harvey Perlman said that the lack of an on-campus medical school (the Medical Center is a separate campus of the University of Nebraska system) and the AAU's disregarding of USDA-funded agricultural research in its metrics hurt the university's performance in the association's internal ranking system. In 2010 Perlman stated that had Nebraska not been part of the AAU, the Big Ten Conference would likely not have invited it to become the athletic conference's 12th member.

References

  1. "Colleges Will Co-operate: Organization of the Association of American Universities". The Washington Post. March 1, 1900. p. 2.
  2. "Association Of American Colleges And Universities. Archived December 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine". Tax Exempt Organization Search. Internal Revenue Service. December 20, 2018.
  3. "Case Western President Named Head of AAU". Inside Higher Ed. Archived from the original on February 19, 2020. Retrieved February 19, 2020.
  4. "Editorial: Association of American Universities". Educational Review. 19: 404–405. April 1900. Archived from the original on May 11, 2022. Retrieved November 5, 2021.
  5. "For Uniform Requirements: Universities Will Fix Standard For Higher Degrees". The Baltimore Sun;. March 1, 1900. p. 2.
  6. "The Association of American Universities: A Century of Service to Higher Education 1900–2000". Association of American Universities. Archived from the original on March 8, 2018. Retrieved February 25, 2018.
  7. Rosenzweig, Robert M. (2001). The Political University: Policy, Politics, and Presidential Leadership in the American Research University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 20. ISBN 9780801868191. Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  8. Rosenzweig, Robert M. (2001). The Political University: Policy, Politics, and Presidential Leadership in the American Research University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 21. ISBN 9780801868191. Archived from the original on May 11, 2022. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  9. Fain, Paul (April 21, 2010). "As AAU Admits Georgia Tech to Its Exclusive Club, Other Universities Await the Call". Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on June 11, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  10. Hine, Chris (June 13, 2010). "Nebraska has it all to attract Big Ten, most importantly AAU membership". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on September 6, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  11. UMass Amherst: Kumble R. Subbaswamy – Feature Story Archived July 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Umass.edu (May 13, 2012). Retrieved on 2013-07-15.
  12. AAU Facts and Figures Archived September 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Accessed August 24, 2008.
  13. "Membership Policy | Association of American Universities (AAU)". Archived from the original on March 16, 2022. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  14. Abourezk, Kevin (April 29, 2011). "Research universities group ends UNL's membership". Lincoln Journal Star. Archived from the original on May 3, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  15. Selingo, Jeffrey J. (April 29, 2011). "U. of Nebraska-Lincoln Is Voted Out of Assn. of American Universities". Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on May 2, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  16. "Our Members". Associate of American Universities.
  17. "Accredited MD Programs in the United States". LCME. Liaison Committee on Medical Education. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
  18. "AAU Peer Institutions". Data Analytics. August 10, 2016. Archived from the original on May 14, 2018. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  19. "ABET ACCREDITED PROGRAM SEARCH". ABET. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  20. "Land-Grant Colleges and Universities". National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
  21. "Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey". National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
  22. "Dartmouth Joins the Association of American Universities | Dartmouth News". news.dartmouth.edu. Archived from the original on November 7, 2019. Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  23. "Accreditation and Assessment". Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University School of Medicine. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  24. Keag, Kelsey (September 15, 2022). "Luddy's B.S. in Intelligent Systems Engineering program achieves ABET accreditation". Retrieved December 26, 2023.
  25. "The U.S. Land-Grant University System: Overview and Role in Agricultural Research" (PDF). The U.S. Land-Grant University System: Overview and Role in Agricultural Research Congressional Research Service. Retrieved December 7, 2022.
  26. "Accredited U.S. Programs". LCME. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  27. Hernandez-Jason, Scott (November 6, 2019). "Radical excellence: UC Santa Cruz joins Association of American Universities". UC Santa Cruz. Archived from the original on November 6, 2019. Retrieved November 6, 2019.
  28. "Accredited U.S. Programs". LCME. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  29. "Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering". Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering @ UNC & NC State. Archived from the original on May 17, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  30. "The U invited to join the Association of American Universities | @theU". Archived from the original on November 7, 2019. Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  31. O'Connell, The Most Rev. David M. (2002). "From the President's Desk". The Catholic University of America. Archived from the original on June 1, 2013. Retrieved August 25, 2013.
  32. Peter Schmidt, "Clark U. Leaves Association of American Universities; Others May Follow" (September 10, 1999). Chronicle of Higher Education.
  33. "Iowa State concludes its AAU membership". Iowa State University (Press release). Archived from the original on April 21, 2022. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
  34. Jaschik, Scott (April 22, 2022). "Iowa State announces its departure from AAU". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved May 15, 2022.
  35. Selingo, Jeffrey J. (May 2, 2011). "Facing an Ouster From an Elite Group of Universities, Syracuse U. Says It Will Withdraw". Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on May 4, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
  36. Lewin, Tamar (May 3, 2011). "American Universities Group Votes to Expel Nebraska". The New York Times. Retrieved May 15, 2022.
  37. "AAU Statement on the Research and Development Efficiency Act". Association of American Universities. July 14, 2014. Archived from the original on July 25, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2014.

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