AAU Expansion Hot Take
My hot takes and burining questions on the AAU's announced expansion.
The Association of American Universities (AAU), often described as a club of North America’s top research universities, expanded its membership by six. As reported in a press release, the AAU grew to 71 members with the admission of Arizona State University (ASU), George Washington University (GW), the University of California, Riverside (Riverside), the University of Miami (Miami) University of Notre Dame (ND), and University of South Florida (USF). This is big news in the world of US higher education. The AAU is a famously exclusive group, and changes in membership - some added, and others dropped - signal the shifting fortunes of the country’s universities. AAU drama is only one step above rankings drama. We should avoid inducting in it. But I always fail the marshmallow test. So, I will not seriously analyze the AAU, but I will offer a few hot takes and burning questions because I cannot help myself.
Hot takes
ASU finally gets its Bid
Michale Crow, ASU’s president, has long said that the university was not striving for the AAU. He’s going so far as to write a couple of books arguing why a new university, one that is more accessible and community-engaged, that is not represented by the AAU’s research and graduate education above all stance, ought to be the standard for assessing higher education excellence and relevance. But no one really ever believed this. We all assumed that ASU would want AAU membership as soon as it could get AAU membership. Now, AAU finally gets its Bid to the club.
Holding their noses?
You have to think that some of AAU’s blue-blooded members, like Yale, Princeton, and Berkeley, will want to be associated with the likes of USF and ASU. Chris Marsiano shared this one in a succinct tweet.
Converting tuition money into R&D
Research performance is the primary AAU membership criterion. All of the universities added do a lot of research. That’s without question. But the AAU also cares where the money comes from. Federally funded research that, with funds awarded from competitive grants, such as those awarded by the NIH and NSF, is given a higher priority by the AAU than other sources of R&D. According to my calculations of NSF data, nationwide, only 25% of all R&D expenditures come from institutions own funds, usually tuition income, appropriations, and endowment payouts. But four out of six new members exceed that figure, meaning they generally rely more on institutional funds than average. With this expansion, the AAU is expanding the acceptability of using tuition money to fund research; that’s my take. You can read more about my thoughts on this general topic here.
The Florida Factor
Why would the AAU expand by adding two new members from Florida (one public, one private)? The state is hostile to academic freedom, which the AAU says it values, and the government of Florida seems indifferent about research. Florida is not Massachusetts when it comes to nurturing research and science. So what gives? I think two FL members were admitted not despite the state’s adverse conditions for higher education but because of them. I bet that the AAU wants to entrench academic interests in the state to counter the anti-science, anti-academic politics of the state. By adding two campuses with different constituencies in different parts of the state, the AAU is working to bring more stakeholders in line with the political interests of research universities and science. Or at least that’s my guess. USF is the AAU’s first “compass point” university, and Miami is not the sort of research university - at scope or scale - typical of the association. If you ask me, being in FL is their strongest qualification.
Burning Questions
Will anyone be thrown out?
The AAU has long sought to avoid getting too large. Broad membership would compromise its exclusivity and status. Expansion is often associated with retraction. New members are let in, and some old ones are asked to step down. Will this happen again? And if it does, who will be kicked out? There’s a decent chance I will soon not be a professor at an AAU university.
A new approach?
This expansion has pluralized the membership. The universities the AAU represents are now much more diverse than they have been in the past. Does this mean the AAU will take a new approach and focus on a border set of concerns? Will it measure members’ performance differently?
Canada?
Two AAU members - Toronto and McGill - are Canadians. As the AAU expands to places like Tampa and Phoenix but not Vancouver and Edmonton, the status of the two Canadian universities seem extra awkward. Will the AAU ask the Canadians to leave? Will the Canadians excuse themselves? Why the AAU has yet to go in for a North American approach is almost certainly about policy, lobbying, and not university performance. At this point, the legacy status of Toronto and McGill as AAU members is very odd.
Ok, enough.