Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities is an organization of predominantly American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 69 public and private universities in the United States as well as 2 universities in Canada. AAU membership is by invitation only and requires an affirmative vote of three-quarters of current members.
Organization
The AAU was founded on February 28, 1900, by a group of 14 Doctor of Philosophy degree-granting universities in the United States to strengthen and standardize American doctoral programs. 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. The AAU's founding members elected Harvard's Charles William Eliot as the association's first president and Stanford's David Starr Jordan as its first chairman.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.
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. 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.
Today, the AAU consists of 71 U.S. and Canadian universities of varying sizes and missions that share a commitment to research. The six newest members, added in 2023, are: Arizona State University; George Washington University; the University of California, Riverside; the University of Miami; the University of Notre Dame; and the University of South Florida. 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 "ew presidents of nonmember universities often list gaining admission to the AAU as a goal of their administration." 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." 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." 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. 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.The AAU acts as a lobbyist at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., 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.
Statistics
, AAU members accounted for 58 percent 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.| Category | Number | National percentage |
| Undergraduate students | 1,044,759 | 7% |
| Undergraduate degrees awarded | 235,328 | 17% |
| Graduate students | 418,066 | 20% |
| Non professional master's degrees awarded | 106,971 | 19% |
| Professional doctorate and masters degrees awarded | 20,859 | 25% |
| Research doctorates awarded | 22,747 | 52% |
| Postdoctoral fellows | 30,430 | 67% |
| National Merit/Achievement Scholars | 5,434 | 63% |
| Members of the United States National Academies | 2,993 | 82% |
| Students studying abroad | 57,205 | |
| Faculty | 72,000 |