New Universities Just Joined the AAU. That Will Change Their Campuses in These 3 Ways.

U. of Utah

Joining the Association of American Universities is a lot about the prestige. But it’s not only about the prestige.

That’s what three new members will find as they join the selective group. On Wednesday, Dartmouth College, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of Utah announced that they are now part of the elite association, upping the group’s composition to 63 American and two Canadian institutions.

It’s a big deal for the top echelon of research universities. Campuses openly vie to join the association, and even nonmembers use its membership criteria to judge their own research money and faculty performance.

In their celebratory statements, many colleges acknowledge that the designation is a badge of honor, an affirmation that their institutions’ research capacity and educational programs met a high bar. That’s partly because it’s uncommon to be asked to join — the association last took in new members in 2012.

More practically, the AAU’s newest campuses now have the power of a federal advocacy arm at their disposal, a new affiliation to promote online, and a few more meetings on the calendar. They’ll also gain these three things:

1. Bragging rights for an in-the-know audience — which can help attract faculty members.

Elite colleges have lots of ways to puff up their chests to the outside world. Universities build elaborate football stadiums, accept tiny percentages of undergraduate applicants, and climb as high as they can in college rankings. Many of those signals are meant for the public.

Joining the AAU doesn’t have as much cachet for a wider audience, as, say, a top ranking in U.S. News & World Report, said Charles A. Goldman, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation who specializes in measuring higher-education performance.

The AAU’s membership criteria, which include everything from research funding to faculty citations, is wonkier. But for people who work inside higher education, being in the AAU is a shorthand for excellence in knowledge production.

That could be a boost for recruiting faculty members in certain cases.

“If you’re trying to bring on board productive scholars, influential scholars, it adds to the appeal to say, ‘This is an AAU member institution,’” said Alexander McCormick, an associate professor of education leadership at Indiana University at Bloomington, who previously worked on university classification at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “It says that the institution has the infrastructure and support for research activity, and you can be somewhat confident that the institution understands what’s involved in running high-end research projects and supporting faculty members who want to get grants.”

2. A private network for top campus officials.

Regular, private meetings of AAU members allow for tight-knit networking and problem solving. Senior research officers meet to talk about funding and regulatory issues. Federal-relations leaders and graduate deans meet, too. Even partners and spouses of AAU presidents and chancellors have their own forum.

“There’s a lot of value in being able to talk out of the public eye, with peer institutions about common issues and challenges,” Goldman said.

The small size of the group is a point of pride for some members — and some members talk about the group as if it were a vaunted fraternity.

“The advantage of this association, compared to others in higher ed, is that we’re all supposed to be alike,” a public-university president leading an AAU institution told The Chronicle in 2011. “If that’s no longer the case, then we lose the benefits of membership.”

3. Terror of being cast out.

Universities celebrate widely after joining the association. Each of the new members touted the nod on their campus websites. But there’s a looming problem if you get into the AAU: One day, it might kick you out.

Member universities must continue to invest in research infrastructure and graduate programs, among other things, to maintain their position. “It’s not just meeting a threshold,” McCormick said, “but keeping up with the Joneses.” He added that getting asked to leave is “a source of great worry.”

And it’s not unheard of. In 2011 the University of Nebraska at Lincoln was voted out of the association, and Syracuse University said it would withdraw after signs pointed to an ouster. The two institutions had been put under review. It was a “difficult and, frankly, painful” process for the association and its members, the group’s then president said at the time.

Right now, that’s a remote concern for the new members. Prestige in higher education is a lagging indicator, Goldman said. For example, building a new lab today may result in a swath of citations a decade down the road — and those citations are a criteria for membership.

“The same is also true about decay in prestige — it also takes a while,” he said. Even if elite institutions “don’t maintain the same levels of performance, they will continue to be recognized potentially for 10 to 20 years, even if their level of performance has diminished.”

Audrey Williams June contributed to this article.

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.