Iowa State leaving AAU

 This topic comes up often due to Big 10 requiring AAU for membership.

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Iowa State leaving AAU

For what it's worth, the only AAU-eligible university in the ARWU top 150 that is not already in AAU is Arizona State. Same is true for the THE research university ranking -- every US AAU-eligible university in their top 150 other than Arizona State is already in AAU.

Last go around, Syracuse left voluntarily and Nebraska got voted out. Now, Iowa State is leaving voluntarily but maybe there are other schools that are being discussed. The announcement stresses how research funding has shifted from agriculture to medicine in the 65 years since ISU was first admitted to the AAU.

There are basically two separate divisions in AAU- the small private division and the large public division. Each gets judged accordingly so Iowa State and Princeton aren’t really competing for the same spot. Iowa State departing probably creates an opening for another large public.

The medical school issue is a red herring. Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Maryland, MIT, Oregon, Princeton, Purdue, Rice, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz -- that's more than 20% of the AAU membership -- don't have medical schools.

If someone wants to argue about "new AAU standards" requiring medical schools, that still doesn't fly. Georgia Tech and UC Santa Cruz are two of the newest AAU members, and neither has a medical school.

And (this should go without saying) having a medical school can only help a university in research rankings if the medical school has a strong research component -- i.e., a lot of researchers who focus on research, win a lot of competitive grants, and rarely if ever teach medical students.

The issue that AAU appears to have focused on is *competitively awarded* research grants. Maybe noncompetitive grants that are given to a university by a government entity or a private corporation were once given the same weight as competitively awarded research grants, but not so much anymore. Also, noncompetitive grants are much less likely to lead to peer-reviewed published research, and that would also make such grants far less valuable in university research rankings.

The pecking order based on metrics are:

1. NC State
2. Cincy
3. VT
4. Georgia
5. ASU
6. USF

But metrics don't get you the votes needed to overcome a blackball. NC State got blackballed by a conference member in 2010.

Of the 65 or so votes you need to get 3/4 to get in - that's 49 votes, meaning if you lose 18 votes you are toast.

There are 7 main groups that tend to vote together:

1. The NE/Boston Group
2. The NY Group
3. The Ivies
4. The Big 10
5. The West Coast Including PAC schools
6. True Southern Schools
7. Chicago/Pittsburg Schools

Lose any of the first 5 groups and you are dead. The only thing more difficult than becoming the third school from a particular state, is becoming the fourth.

This also tells you a little something about the pull of Senators Grassly and Earnst.

Based on the chart when UNL got kicked out a decade back, here are the non-AAU schools and their rank (note that 2 are rated above any AAU members). Note that many of these 25 listed are specialty schools or highly dependent solely on their medical school and so would not be admitted.
1 Rockefeller U.
2 UC-San Francisco
31 Georgia Tech (since admitted)
31 Yeshiva U.
37 Dartmouth (since admitted)
37 Boston U. (since admitted)
40 UAB
43 Tufts (since admitted)
43 UM-Baltimore County
49 Utah (since admitted)
52 UC Santa Cruz (since admitted)
55 RPI
57 Wake Forest
59 Miami
61 UI-Chicago
62 Cincinnati
64 Colorado St.
67 Oregon St.
68 George Washington U.
69 New Mexico
72 Wayne St.
72 UC-Riverside
76 Alaska-Fairbanks
76 VCU
79 Vermont

Where are these rankings?

https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2021

https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?...ce&ds=herd

My guesses on who are on the hot seat,
1) Tulane (ARWU rank #601-700, Private, Southern, admitted 1958, #116 in R&D funding per NSF)
2) Oregon (#301-400, Public, Western, 1969, #154)
3) Buffalo (#301-400, Public, Eastern, 1989, #62)
4) Brandeis (#301-400, Private, Eastern, 1985, #185)
5) Stony Brook (#301-400, Public, Eastern, 2001, #98)
6) Mizzou (#201-300, Public, Midwest, 1908, #74)
7) Kansas (#201-300, Public, Midwest, 1909, #70)

Most anxious to start lobbying,
1) University of Miami
2) Arizona State
3) Virginia Tech
4) British Columbia
5) NC State

https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?...ce&ds=herd

Check it out for yourself. You’re now behind FSU.