UNL and the AAU
Today, we’re skipping our normal finals grading procrastin-baking for a deep dive into UNL and the AAU. That is, the American Association of Universities (no relation to the AAUP).
The AAU is an invitation-only member organization of top-tier research universities on the North American continent, 69 in the US and 2 in Canada. Members of this elite club include private institutions like Harvard and Yale, as well as public flagship universities, like the University of Texas at Austin.
UNL is currently the only member of the Big10 that is not also a member of the AAU, raising questions about UNL’s status in this elite consortium of universities that provides not only our football opponents and TV cache, but also academic and research resources.
Although UNL was among the earliest members of the AAU, joining in 1909, its membership was reviewed in 2011, using new metrics, and subsequently voted out of the organization.
In the last several years, university priorities have reflected a heavy, top-down push from the BOR and President Gold to throw themselves at AAU, such as the accreditation merger with UNMC, a fancy new engineering building, and the desperate begging by administrators to apply for just one more grant and to take just one more PhD student.
However, the shortsightedness of the program cuts, the destruction of tenure at UNL, and the damage to academic freedom and shared governance all injure UNL’s ability to rejoin the AAU.
That is the TL; DR.
But we’ve got more procrastinating to do, especially since Canvas is down worldwide, to avoid our final grading. So please enjoy while you procrastinate your grading as well.
UNL Booted from the AAU
In 2011, UNL was voted out of the AAU, despite being among one of the earliest members, which included many current Big10 members and regional neighbors: UW-Madison (1900), University of Michigan (1900), University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (1908), University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (1908), University of Iowa (1909), University of Indiana (1909), The Ohio State University (1916), Northwestern (1917), University of Kansas (1909) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (1908).
Among the current Big10, AAU members also include upstarts like the University of Washington (1950), Purdue University (1958), Penn State (1958), University of Oregon (1969), University of Maryland at College Park (1969), University of Southern California (1969), UCLA (1974), and Rutgers-New Brunswick (1989). These institutions are often cited as our (aspirational) peer group.* Notably, UNL is now the only Big10 member that is not also a member of the AAU.
A quick recap of why UNL was turned out of the country club of Universities. AAU membership is based on two sets of metrics: Phase 1 focuses on research productivity, notably only including competitive federal grant dollars in its count. Phase 2 focuses largely on graduate education, but also includes state grants and industry contracts. This means that state grants and contracts, and other sources of research support, such as foundation funding, which in some fields makes up a significant portion of grants, aren’t counted until you have sufficient federal dollars in Phase 1.
AAU states that they also look at Pell enrollment and graduation rates for undergrads, as well as the overall undergraduate graduation rate and the gap between the two.
In 2010, new metrics were adopted, and according to this Chronicle of Higher Education article, with little input from the full membership. An anonymous university leader stated that there was a sense that too many membership decisions were being made by the numbers in the revised membership criteria. In 2011, based on these new metrics, UNL and Syracuse University were identified for a review.
From everything we have ever read about it, the deck was stacked against UNL as a land-grant institution in an agricultural state; too much of our research expenditures came from non-competitive USDA money, and too many agricultural researchers were used in the denominator, despite their research expenditures not counting in the numerator. Without a med school to call our very own, it was hard to make up the federal dollars. The 2011 vote was by no means unanimous, but it did meet the 2/3s majority threshold to remove UNL.
Then, AAU president Robert M. Berdahl called UNL “a fine institution” in the statement announcing they had been kicked out. This strikes us like saying your date had a good personality. Tell us how you really feel, Bob.
UNL was left with quite a chip on its shoulder. And who can blame them after they had been forced out by metrics that members had little input into and that did not consider the full breadth of membership activities. Our members in terminated departments can relate to feelings of unfairness and the need to prove that you are not as underperforming as they say you are.
We encourage you to refresh yourself in the above link about the episode that led to UNL’s AAU ouster, as well as this coverage of the ongoing bid to rejoin the AAU started under former NU President Ted Carter.
* However, this is not actually UNL's peer group as determined by the Nebraska Coordinating Commission of Post-Secondary Education (CCPE). According to that body, UNL's peer institutions are: Colorado State University-Ft. Collins, Iowa State University, Louisiana State University, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Kentucky, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Oklahoma-Norman, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Washington State, Oregon State, and University of Utah. At least in part, UNL faculty are not paid like Big10 faculty is because no one is comparing our salaries to the (aspirational) peer group.
Steps Taken to Rejoin the AAU
In recent years, UNL has made efforts to shore up its engineering program, including a big new building and the merger between the UNL and UNO engineering programs, about which some of our colleagues have been grumbling for several years. The accreditation merger with UNL and UNMC, done without faculty input, was also a naked attempt by NU to increase UNL’s rankings and to game the metrics by increasing the research funding counted by AAU without investing in UNL faculty to be able to successfully achieve grant funding and win awards.
During the last decade, staff cuts along with turnover that results in the loss of institutional knowledge have degraded both pre- and post-award grant support; however, administrators are constantly demanding greater federal grant productivity from faculty. The desperation for federal dollars likely also has contributed to UNL administrator’s conciliatory attitude towards the federal government’s on again/off again attacks on research that focuses on women, rural places, people of color, and any other phrase deemed to be DEI, as well as the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), the shuttering of the PRISM living-learning community, the recent axing of the Gender and Sexuality Center, and the threats made to people’s employment to twist the collective arm of the College of Arts and Sciences to voluntarily disband the Institute of Ethnic Studies major.
Many of these closures were done without consultation with faculty, and the closure of ODI was done over the protests of faculty members during the summer when most were off contract. While the argument can be made that most of these closures are on the student affairs side, and thus do not fall into the academic purview of faculty, recent research on higher education student success no longer takes an academic affairs/student affairs split, but instead focuses on the student and their environment. This suggests that faculty cannot simply “stay in their lane” when it comes to the success of all students, as recent BOR bylaws changes seem to suggest we just shut up and teach. And of course, the general, less-than-welcoming environment being created by these actions could impact undergraduate and graduate student retention, a part of the Phase 2 AAU metrics.
These closures also have a chilling effect on academic freedom, which is a core attribute of a university that nurtures research innovation. So while the administration thinks they are strengthening their AAU bid on one hand, they are weakening it on the other.
Program Cuts Hurt AAU Bid
The program cuts of 2025 can also be seen through this lens of what administrators might think helps their bid to rejoin the AAU, but probably weakens their bid.
The documents submitted to the Board of Regents ahead of the vote on department cuts included a section on whether the elimination of each department would hurt its chances of getting back into the AAU. That information, as far as we could tell, was the only correct information given to the BOR.
In part, that’s because while these four units might not have collectively racked up undergraduate credit hours and degrees granted (one not having any undergraduate programs at all and one having only started its undergrad program three years ago), they collectively graduate a significant number of doctoral students, with EDAD among the top PhD-producing departments in the whole university.
But more importantly, it is worth pointing out that none of the four eliminated departments are in any way incompatible with AAU membership.
EDAD
Each of the universities listed above is home to an Educational Administration or Educational Leadership department. UW-Madison ranks 1st, and Northwestern and the University of Michigan tie for 2nd in the US News and World Report’s rankings of graduate schools of education. UCLA ranks 6th, and the University of Kansas and the University of Oregon tie for 16th. Pretty clearly, having strong graduate programs in education is not incompatible with being a fancy-pants university (the graduate schools of education at Harvard, Columbia, and NYU all rank very highly as well, if state universities are not fancy enough for you). We’ve also already seen that UNL’s EDAD faculty were by no means underperforming in research productivity compared to their Big10 peers and were in the top quartile of all Educational Admin/Leadership departments in the country. Our internal analysis of Academic Analytics suggests that collectively, EDAD faculty actually had the highest Scholarly Research Index (SRI) rankings in CEHS. That is when each CEHS unit is compared with its disciplinary peers, rather than each other, EDAD pops right to the top. But educational leadership is a notoriously difficult field for federal funding, as the research base has already demonstrated the indirect impacts of educational leadership, and the funder formerly known as the Institute of Education (IES) requires studies with direct impacts. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t other funding in the field. Foundations such as the Wallace Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the W.T. Grant Foundation provide significant funding in the field, and you will find their names on EDAD faculty CVs. State departments of education also fund research in educational administration, and again, you will see the Nebraska Department of Education contracts on EDAD faculty members’ CVs.
Statistics
UNL is now the only Big10 institution where you cannot earn a degree in Statistics. The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities doesn’t just have a statistics department; it has an entire school of statistics. The University of Kansas appears to have three departments that will teach you statistics. The two exceptions appear to be the University of Oregon, which does not seem to have a standalone department, and USC, where statistics lives in the math department (an arrangement our STATS colleagues suggested in lieu of elimination); however, both universities provide statistics degree programs in those units. The STATS department was likewise among the top quartile in research productivity. One of the eliminated faculty members won an NSF Career Award just this fall. Not to mention that there has been no plan announced for replacing the graduate students who staff the statistics help desk, which supports faculty and graduate students across the University. Many faculty members have research publications and successfully funded federal grant proposals (the most important AAU criteria!) BECAUSE of the statistics graduate student engine. We struggle to comprehend how the loss of so many statisticians on campus helps research productivity.
EAS
Well, obviously, those places surely can’t all have programs similar to the department formerly known as Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, not in this political climate. Au contraire, mes amis! Rutgers is home to a Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and a Geosciences department. At UCLA, you can get degrees in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and they have a Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences. USC has an Earth Sciences Department. And while we could spend all day Googling Big10 departments that grant degrees in meteorology and geology, we have it on good authority from the EAS chair that UNL is now the only Big10 school without a geology department. Between the importance of fossils found in Nebraska and our dependency on groundwater, the absence of a geology program at UNL is a lot more shocking than urban-serving institutions like Rutgers offering a geology degree. We’re told meteorology is a bit more hit and miss, but our friends in EAS couldn’t finish getting that out before we yelled about tornadoes and their contributions to preparing the people who keep us safe in those storms and other inclement weather Nebraska experiences frequently.
TMFD
Ok, but what about textiles? You can study textiles at UW-Madison, The Ohio State, the University of Indiana-Bloomington, the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. While textiles and apparel programs are more likely to be found at your Kansas States and your Oklahoma States, housing a department where people study aspects of textile production, design, and use is not remotely a disqualification from AAU membership. We would love to comment on the research productivity of the TMFD faculty, but UNL never fixed its CIP code in Academic Analytics, and so comparisons to appropriate peer departments cannot be done. We also want to point out that UNL is home to the International Quilt Museum, but now no longer has a textiles program to go with it, and the uniqueness of TMFD places it squarely within the APC criteria for non-elimination.
Cooking the Extension Books
Both Statistics and TMFD were home to tenure-line faculty with Extension appointments. While cutting these faculty can help cook the books by reducing the number of tenure-line faculty from the equation who are supported by federal Extension allocations, ultimately, cutting these faculty members does not help the bottom line, as they are research active and contribute to graduate education. We note that one of those Stats faculty members was awarded an NSF Career Award in September 2025. While this award is not on the AAU list of awards, it is the kind of award an earlier career faculty member might win on the way to those fancypants prestigious awards. Ooops!
Goodbye Graduate Education
So far, the teach-out plans across the four eliminated units have been a disaster, but especially so for doctoral students, many of whom will be losing their committee chairs before they complete their degrees. As we’re sure everyone reading this knows, students do not choose PhD programs solely for the program; they choose the program because there is a specific faculty member or, at the very least, a specific expertise held by a faculty member. Telling students they can just finish up their degree under the supervision of someone else, especially someone else not in the field, is doing them a huge disservice. Any PhD applicant in any field is surely going to think twice before applying to UNL, where their advisor could simply be fired for whatever reason or no reason at all.
This seems wholly at odds with trying to get back into the AAU, since the number of doctoral students and post-docs counts, as does the overall breadth and depth of graduate education. By cutting four programs with heavy graduate education programs, UNL has not set itself up well to get back into the AAU.
Cuts on Paper or Death by 1000 Paper Cuts
And you might say, but guys, universities are cutting programs left and right. Sure, on paper. Indiana is merging all kinds of units into new units with bland-sounding names so as not to trigger the DEI police, but that doesn’t mean these institutions are violating the principles of tenure and firing everyone. However, Indiana’s university leaders are most definitely violating academic freedom and ignoring shared governance in alarming ways.
Penn State is also looking at program closures and mergers. We asked a friend about it recently, and he said that in education at least, the degree programs being closed are in some cases redundant with other offerings, and in other cases, specialized programs are being removed from the books because they no longer align with the state’s teacher endorsements. There is no need for a middle grades program if there is no longer a middle grades teaching endorsement. These are cuts on paper, not death by a 1000 paper cuts.
And sure, while it is rough out there in higher education these days, UNL seems to be the only university running to shutter whole departments with hundreds of students. And in particular, UNL seems to be the only institution running to close not tiny undergraduate majors but larger graduate student departments who contribute not only to the overall PhD count and research productivity, but in the case of STATS, to the research productivity of other faculty members and units. Make it make sense if you want the AAU to invite you to its very special club.
Cuts are Contrary to Membership in the AAU
As many faculty members at UNL have already stated, you cannot cut your way to excellence, nor can excellence be efficient. Excellence requires investment, and it is clear that investments at UNL have been made in administrative salaries and not in the faculty members who carry out the work of teaching, research, and service to the state. This is something EVC Button seemed to understand back when he was the CAS Dean in 2023:
“I don’t need to tell you (that budget cuts go) exactly contrary to a university that’s trying to seek membership in AAU,” Button said. “You don’t cut your way into the AAU. But, that’s essentially what we’re doing.”
Cutting solid academic programs in the name of budget cuts while simultaneously begging to rejoin the AAU, not to mention the fiasco the budget reduction process was, and continues to be, demonstrates how fundamentally unserious UNL is as a university.
We suggest that AAU not entertain UNL’s bald-faced, desperate, and poorly thought-out attempt to get back into their good graces. And we hope in the face of continued foot-dragging to reinstate all of the eliminated departments and their faculty, that the National AAUP will join us in this call to tell AAU to reject advances from UNL.
