Passed over by Association of American Universities: A goal for decades, FSU wasn't invited
There are currently 71 university members in the group, with 69 from the United States and two from Canada.
The addition of USF makes it the first public university in the state to be invited to join the AAU in nearly 40 years following the University of Florida’s acceptance in 1985.
This also makes USF and UF the only two institutions from Florida’s State University System to serve as AAU members.
News 'a shock' to some Florida State faculty
Attaining AAU membership has been one of FSU President Richard McCullough’s top goals ever since he started his presidency in August 2021, and he has mentioned that ambition during his first State of the University address in January 2022 as well as in his second one in November.
The United Faculty of Florida’s FSU Chapter President Matthew Lata says he is not incredibly familiar with the AAU's metrics, but he said it was “a shock” to find out that USF was invited while FSU was not.
FSU's desire to become a part of the AAU follows its overarching goal of tapping into the country’s top 15 public universities as it is currently ranked no. 19 on the list, according to the U.S. News & World Report.
USF is currently ranked No. 42 in the same category.
In addition, while FSU has a 74% four-year graduation rate, USF has a 60% rate.
But as public universities, there is one thing that both USF and UF have, which could be a major contributor to their AAU bragging right, that FSU does not currently have — teaching hospitals.
FSU has plans of its own in the health and research sector with an FSU Health-Academic Health Center initiative that could potentially catch AAU’s attention in the future once completed in a couple of years.
For decades, FSU has tried to join the AAU club
Although being a part of the AAU has been one of McCullough’s priorities during his past year as president, the goal has been top of mind for FSU’s presidents for years.
During former FSU President Bernie Sliger’s 15-year tenure from 1976 to 1991, the university gained many groundbreaking additions, which included being awarded the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, acquiring FSU’s first three supercomputers and establishing the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering as the only shared engineering school in the nation — all accomplishments that were expected to play a role in helping FSU get one step closer to qualifying for AAU membership.
AAU selects USF in stunning rebuke of FSU: Where is the accountability?
USF and FSU have long sought membership in the AAU. FSU entered the competition with notable advantages. A vibrant national brand, a three-year head start on preeminence funding from the state, unique and broad excellence across disciplines, research, and professions.
Starting in 2015, FSU leadership (Board of Trustees Chair Ed Burr, President John Thrasher, Provost Sally McRorie, and Vice-President for Research Gary Ostrander) secured resources and set ambitious goals that inspired administrators, faculty, staff, and students on a quest for national prominence. In a few short years, FSU broke into the ranks of the U.S. News & World Report Top 20 public universities. It was a rocket ride, with every metric pointing in the right direction. AAU membership was within sight.
https://www.on3.com/boards/threads/fsu-and-the-aau.976561/#post-17272769
National Science Foundation - Rankings by total R&D expenditures:
Florida State U. #83 9.9 $328,604,000*
Clemson U. #107 12.6 $237,485,000
*Note: FSU was $356,000,000 for 2022.
Note:
U. South Florida #68 8.3 $405,088,000
U. Miami #75 9.1 $375,84,000
U. Notre Dame #106 12.4 $240,324,000
Based on the above, assuming R&D expenditures are a big factor, maybe FSU is closer to AAU membership than we think.
AAU institutions:
U. Missouri, Columbia 71 8.6 388,77
U. Kansas 72 8.7 385,637
Dartmouth C. 82 9.8 330,226
Brown U. 96 11.4 276,331
SUNY, Stony Brook U. 98 11.6 274,516
George Washington U., The 101 11.9 266,108
U. California, Santa Barbara 104 12.2 248,961
Tufts U. 110 12.9 224,956
Tulane U. 119 13.9 205,206
U. California, Riverside 133 15.4 189,600
U. California, Santa Cruz 142 16.4 160,615
U. Oregon 149 17.1 139,193
Brandeis U. 165 18.9 107,549
Note: I would think the following would also be strong AAU candidates:
North Carolina State U. 53 6.7 547,118 (#72 US News)
VaTech: 54 6.8 542,045 (#62 US News)
UGA: 57 7.1 493,944 (#49 US News)
Per the AAU site, it's based on federal research, not total research. They also consider per-faculty measures, so even if a university does less research than FSU, they still might be "weighted" higher due to being a smaller school with less faculty.
AAU Membership Indicators
The AAU presidents and chancellors have adopted the following set of membership indicators to use in assessments of the U.S. current and potential new members. All indicators will be tabulated as both actual values and normalized, per-faculty measures where feasible.
Phase I Indicators
AAU MEMBERSHIP INDICATORS: Data Sources
Phase I Indicators
Competitively funded federal research support: federal R&D expenditures
A ten-year average of federal research expenditures (including S&E and non-S&E) adjusted to exclude USDA formula-allocated research expenditures. This indicator includes obligations for the AFRI program funded by USDA. Expenditures for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab were excluded.
There are other "indicators" used as well beyond just research. It's not as straight-forward as the stats you provided. You would need to normalize the data between all the schools you listed to account for that. The AAU also seems to favor NIH (HHS) and NSF over other federal sources. On the NSF site, it links to each individual school, and you can see their "federally funded, by agency: 2021–12", though - while I'm not sure - I assume that includes the "formula-allocated USDA" research which does not count towards AAU.
If you want to see something that is nuts, look at the "Research Space" rankings from the NSF.
If you ever had any doubt whatsoever that uf monopolized State of Florida higher education taxpayer dollars for decades, then look no further than these rankings:
Institution Rank Percentile Research Space
Florida 1 1 4,900,656
U. South Florida 85 15.3 799,485
U. Central Florida 101 18 706,596
Florida International U. 124 21.9 561,767
Florida State U. 145 25.5 461,800
Florida Atlantic U. 180 31.4 291,338
Florida Institute of Technology 211 36.7 234,776
Florida A&M U. 232 40.3 207,012
U. North Florida 244 42.3 184,635
Florida Gulf Coast U. 259 44.9 150,689
U. West Florida 430 74 49,989
Florida Polytechnic University 526 90.3 17,598
uf has managed to secure enough State of Florida taxpayer funding to construct facilities to the point that uf literally has the most research space in the entire nation. For those keeping score, uf has 10X the research space of FSU and 6X of the second-most university in Florida, USF.
Absolutely ridiculous. Note: I am sure this statistic takes into consideration every single UF-IFAS facility in every county in the State of Florida, but it is still completely inequitable.
The interesting thing I see is that FSU lags behind USF, UCF and even FIU.
Crazy.
It suffices to say that FSU has not done well here historically.
BUT you can see why it is so important to President McCollough to get those new medical campuses going in Leon and Bay county. The Tallahassee medical facility alone will add 130,000 gross square feet of medical and research-related space. I am not sure how much of the Panama City facility will be research space, but that will be a 80,000-square-foot facility.
Plus, FSU is also already constructing the Interdisciplinary Research and Commercialization Building. That's another 116,000-square-feet of dedicated research space. FSU broke ground on that facility in 2021, and substantial completion is expected in '24.
The author implies that FSU’s better US News Ranking and graduation rate are factors in AAU membership and then says “as public universities, there is one thing that both USF and UF have, which could be a major contributor to their AAU bragging right, that FSU does not currently have — teaching hospitals.”
Plus, If you go to the NSF website linked , you can see that USF leads FSU in most categories:
Earned Doctorates
FSU #49
USF #55
Doctoral Students
FSU #66
USF #44
R&D Expenditures
FSU #83
USF #68
Research Space
FSU #145
USF #85
The fact is that USF is ahead of FSU in most AAU factors. And nearly all of that is because of USF’s medical school.
https://strategicplan.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-2027-Strategic-Plan.pdf
Here is a ranking of world universities that talks about research in terms of quality.
FSU 250th
ND 300th
https://csnbbs.com/thread-970967-page-3.html
B1G: 15
ACC: 8
Pac12: 8
SEC: 5
AAC: 3
Big12: 1
MAC: 1
Big Ten = 15
Rutgers, USC, UCLA, Ohio State, Penn State, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan State, Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana
ACC = 8
Pitt, Duke, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Boston College, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Miami
Pac-12 = 8
Cal, Stanford, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Arizona State
SEC = 5
Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Texas, Mizzou, Florida
AAU = 3
Rice, Tulane, USF
Big 12 = 1
Kansas
MAC = 1
Buffalo
University of California, Davis (1996)
University of California, Berkeley (1900)
University of California, Irvine (1996)
University of California, Los Angeles (1974)
University of California, Riverside (2023)
University of California, San Diego (1982)
University of California, Santa Barbara (1995)
University of California, Santa Cruz (2019)
Baylor University
Boston College
Drexel University
George Washington University
Georgetown University
Northeastern University
Syracuse University
University of Denver
University of Miami
University of Notre Dame
...
There are definitely quite a few undeserving, legacy AAU public universities, which I will list below (personal opinion), and it is largely my impression on their academic reputation and ranking:
University of Missouri (should be out)
University of Oregon (should be out)
University of Kansas (should be out)
Iowa State University (should be out)
Stony Brook (should be out)
I believe 2 universities that are not invited are way better than those listed above as "should be out" category, they are follows and are likely to get invites:
University of Georgia
NC State
Some honorable mentions here, unlikely but worth a look. Many of these have some fatal flows though, but who knows.
University of South Florida
University of Tennessee
University of Connecticut
Florida State University
Arizona State University
University of Illinois Chicago
Virginia Tech
UT Dallas
California 8.
Florida 3. UF, Miami, USF
Texas 3. Texas, A&M, Rice
The University of Texas system has an endowment of ~$42.1B.
The Texas A&M University system has an endowment of ~$18B.
The University of Houston is $1.3B.
Texas Tech University System is $1.5B.
(Privates for reference - TCU is $2.2B, Baylor is $2B)
The University of California system endowment is $12.1B (though schools like UCLA have a separate $4B endowment, UC Berkley is $2.9B).
The University of Florida is $2.4B.
Florida State is $0.9B.
The University of Miami is $1.4B.
USF is $0.9B.
UCF is $0.25B.
----------
Texas doesn't have a lack of money problem, it has a prioritization problem. You couldn't spread the PUF too thin, there's $60B between the top two Texas publics (compared to like $25B-$30B all in for all the UC schools together).
California is the gold standard. Florida is doing a phenomenal job. Texas (the state), having this level of public university development despite having at least double the funds of the gold standard is a complete embarrassment.
2010 is a while back, but this is how the AAU rated institutions at that point. AAU members are not identified by name. The asterisks indicate schools that have been added since then.
I did not list the # for the AAU schools in the list under #52 as they were all but 9 of those first 51. UAB, UMBC are probably not in because their rank is primarily medical schools. I don't know about UMBC, but UAB has an outstanding medical school. Rockefeller, UCSF and Yeshiva are specialized schools and don't qualify.
1 Rockefeller University
2 UC-San Francisco
31 Georgia Tech ***
31 Yeshiva University
37 Dartmouth ***
37 Boston College ***
40 Alabama Birmingham
43 Tufts ***
43 Maryland-Baltimore County
49 Utah ***
52 UC-Santa Cruz ***
54 AAU
55 AAU
55 RPI
57 Wake Forest
58 AAU
59 AAU
59 Miami FL ***
61 Illinois-Chicago
62 Cincinnati
64 Colorado St.
67 Oregon St.
68 George Washington ***
69 New Mexico
69 AAU
71 AAU
72 Wayne St.
72 UC-Riverside ***
74 AAU
74 AAU
75 AAU
76 Alaska-Fairbanks
78 Virginia Commonwealth
79 Vermont
79 Hawaii
81 Connecticut
81 AAU
83 AAU
83 Georgetown
83 Delaware
86 SUNY-Albany
87 Arizona St. ***
87 South Florida ***
87 AAU probably lowest ranking existing AAU member
90 Massachusetts
91 Virginia Tech
91 North Carolina St.
91 Oklahoma
94 AAU (probably Iowa St. who dropped out in 2022)
94 Florida St.
96 Louisville
96 Kentucky
98 New Mexico St.
99 Notre Dame ***
100 Mississippi
101 Massachusetts
102 New Hampsire
103 South Carolina
104 Houston
105 AAU (probably Syracuse who dropped out in 2010)
105 Utah St.
105 Nevada
105 Howard
109 AAU-Nebraska-voted out in 2010
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?...ce&ds=herd
In absolute $$ R&D expenditures:
USF ranked between 41 - 77 during the past decade.
FSU ranked between 75 - 94 during the past decade.
FSU is clearly not “far, far, far stronger” at Federal lobbying. The only unbiased measure of strength is the ability to win Federal research grants. At least over the past decade, USF has been much more successful by the most important metric.
WHO MADE THE AAU CUT
— Tony Altimore (@TJAltimore) June 2, 2023
...and who didn't:
Mixed in with yesterday's AAU celebrations were frustrations from schools who thought they were ready
There are many factors, but here are the research budgets of leading candidates who didn't make it, compared to new / former AAU members pic.twitter.com/qdk64LXwNK
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fzgnn_cXgAAlY7w?format=png
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