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Membership Policy

Read the Q&A to see answers to commonly asked questions about AAU's membership policies.

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AAU Membership Policy
 

The Association of American Universities (the “Association”) is an association of leading comprehensive research universities distinguished by the breadth and quality of their programs of (a) academic research and scholarship and (b) graduate education. Membership in the association is by invitation. The Association maintains a standing Membership Committee, which periodically evaluates both non-member universities for possible membership and current members for continued membership, with the goal of ensuring that the Association in fact comprises comparable leading research-intensive universities. 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.

While the association does not have a specific limit on the number of its members, it values remaining a relatively small organization whose composition enables productive meetings and collegial relationships among the member presidents and chancellors. It endeavors to balance these characteristics of the association with the expectation that its membership will include the leading research-intensive universities.

In its evaluation of institutions, the Membership Committee is guided by a set of Membership Principles and Membership Indicators. The Membership Principles specify the primary purpose of the association and the corresponding characteristics of its member institutions. The Membership Indicators are a two-phase set of quantitative measures used to assess the breadth and quality of university programs of research and graduate education at U.S. based institutions.

Adopted January 12, 1999
Revised April 20, 2010
Revised April 17, 2023

Body

AAU Membership Principles
 

  1. The primary purpose of AAU should be to provide a forum for the development and implementation of institutional and national policies promoting strong programs of academic research and scholarship and undergraduate, graduate, and professional education.

  1. The members of AAU should be comprehensive universities distinguished by the disciplinary breadth and quality of their programs of graduate education and research.

  1. The members of AAU shall approve appropriate criteria for assessing the breadth and quality of these programs and shall apply these criteria in making judgments about potential new members of the Association and in the assessment of current members.

  1. All current members are subject to ongoing assessment by the Membership Committee. In those instances in which there appears to be a significant and sustained disparity between the mission or accomplishments of a member institution and that of other members of the association, the Membership Committee will make the appropriate recommendations to the Board about continued membership.

Adopted January 12, 1999
Revised April 20, 2010
Revised April 17, 2023
 

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.

These indicators are divided into Phase I indicators, which will be used as the primary indicators of institutional breadth and quality in research and education, and Phase II indicators, which will be used to provide additional important calibrations of institutional research and education programs.

Both the Phase I and Phase II indicators constitute the first stage of membership assessment. The second stage involves a more qualitative set of judgements about institutions and their trajectories.

Phase I Indicators
 

  1. Competitively funded federal research support: The Membership Committee uses National Science Foundation (NSF) research expenditure data, excluding formula-allocated USDA research expenditures. Funding for the Agriculture Food and Research Initiative (AFRI), a competitively funded USDA research support program, is included in the Phase I research support indicator.

  1. Faculty awards, fellowships, and memberships: The Membership Committee gathers data on faculty awards, fellowships, and memberships as an additional assessment of the distinction of an institution’s faculty. Beginning in 2023, memberships in the national academies will be included in this indicator.

  1. Citations: Thomson Reuters InCitesTM citations database provides an annually updated measure of both research volume and quality and will provide a valuable complement to the first four indicators listed above.

  1. Books: The Membership Committee gathers data on book publications to represent scholarship at AAU institutions – especially in the fields of arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Phase II Indicators
 

  1. USDA, state, and industrial research funding: Though these three sources of academic research support fund important, high-quality research, they are treated as Phase II indicators since they are generally not allocated through competitive, merit-review processes. Competitively funded USDA research programs, such as AFRI, that can be separately identified in reported data are included in Phase I data.

  1. Doctoral education: The Committee uses number of PhDs granted annually, using Department of Education IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) data. These data are treated as Phase II indicators to de-emphasize the quantitative dimensions of Ph.D. programs and avoid sending an unintended signal to institutions to increase Ph.D. output.

  1. Number of postdoctoral appointees: The Committee uses NSF-compiled data from institutions on postdoctoral appointees, most of whom are in the health sciences, physical sciences, and engineering. Postdoctoral education is an important component of university research and education activities that the committee believes should be tracked in AAU membership indicators. However, because postdoctoral activity is highly correlated with university research and because self-reported postdoctoral data are less uniform than data on federally funded research, postdoctoral appointees are treated as a Phase II indicator.

Informational Metrics
 

  1. Pell Enrollment: The Membership Committee gathers data on the share of full-time, first-time undergraduate students who are recipients of Pell grants.

  1. Undergraduate Graduation Rate: The Membership Committee gathers data on the 6-year graduation rates for bachelor's degree students.

  1. Pell Grant Recipient Graduation Rate: The Membership Committee gathers data on the 6-year graduation rates for full-time first-time bachelor's degree seeking Pell grant recipient cohort.

  1. Graduation Rate Gap: The graduation rate gap reflects the overall graduation rate minus the Pell grant recipient graduation rate.

Data sources section below shows the source of the indicator data.

Adopted July 18, 2000
Revised October 2012
Revised April 17, 2023
 

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.

  • National Science Foundation (NSF) Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges/Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD), data for the most recently available ten-year average. Table Builder | NCSES | NSF .

Faculty awards, fellowships, and memberships

AAU collects the number of faculty members by institution receiving awards, fellowships, and memberships in the National Research Council (NRC) list of highly prestigious awards that included: research/scholarship awards, teaching awards, prestigious fellowships or memberships in honorary societies. Each data year represents the faculty’s lifetime honors and awards, not new honors and awards. University of Maryland, College Park data includes University of Maryland, Baltimore beginning in 2019.

  • The Faculty Scholarly Productivity (FSP) Database. These data are reproduced under a license agreement with Academic Analytics. http://academicanalytics.com/ .

  • Memberships in the National Academies (NAS, NAE, NAM) compiled from the membership lists of each academy; lists can be found at:

Citations

Average number of times an institution’s Web of Science Documents have collectively been cited for the most recent ten-year period. The University of Maryland, College Park data includes University of Maryland, Baltimore beginning in 2019.

Books

The total number of books published by the institution for the most recent ten-year period.

  • The Faculty Scholarly Productivity (FSP) Database. These data are reproduced under a license agreement with Academic Analytics. http://academicanalytics.com/
     

Phase II Indicators
 

USDA, state, and industrial research funding

National Science Foundation (NSF) Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges/Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD), data for the most recently available ten-year average. AFRI obligations were subtracted from these values. Table Builder | NCSES | NSF .

Doctoral Education

Number of research/scholarship doctorates compiled from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) completions survey data for the most recently available ten-year average. Indiana University doctorates include data from Indiana University, Purdue University in Indianapolis (UIPUI). http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Default.aspx .

Number of Postdoctoral Appointees

NSF-NIH Survey of Graduate Students & Postdoctorates in S&E, conducted by the NSF NCSES, data for the most recently available ten-year average. Table Builder | NCSES | NSF.

Informational Metrics
 

Pell Enrollment

Compiled from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Student Financial Aid and Net Price survey. The reported Pell enrollment is the average percentage of full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students awarded Pell grants over the most recent ten years of available data.

Undergraduate Graduation Rate

Compiled from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Graduation Rates survey. The graduation rate is the total number of completers in six years for each of the past 10 years divided by the bachelor’s or equivalent degree/certificate adjusted cohort.

Pell Grant Recipient Graduation Rate

Compiled from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Graduation Rates survey. Among each total cohort (bachelor's and other degree/certificate seeking) the Pell grant graduation rate is calculated by dividing the total number of Pell grant recipients that completed an award within 150% of normal time by the total Pell grant recipient adjusted cohort.

Graduation Rate Gap

The average undergraduate graduation rate minus the average graduation rate of Pell grant recipients.

Faculty Counts for Normalization

The faculty counts for normalization are drawn from two sources:

  1. IPEDS Human Resources Survey, data for the most recently available ten-year average. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Default.aspx .

IPEDS Employee Assigned by Position (EAP) Descriptors (all categories are for full-time employees—excluding medical schools—with faculty status who are on the tenure track or tenured):

  • Instructional staff, primarily instruction

  • Instructional staff, instruction/research/public service

  • Research

  • Management

  1. For institutions with medical schools, the average for the most recently available ten-year average basic science medical school faculty counts, as compiled by the Association of American Medical Colleges, are added to the IPEDS total. https://www.aamc.org/data/facultyroster/reports/ .

Adopted January 18, 2002
Updated October, 2016
Updated April, 2021
Updated October, 2022
Updated April, 2023