Top Prestigious Research Universities---Rise & Fall

College Search & Lists
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<p>If we take membership in the Association of American Universities as a indicator of the most prestigious research universities, one might consider membership as the ultimate peer assessment. It is interesting to look at when particular universities were invited to join the club. Listed below is a list of the members according to date of membership. If we take the founding members as the top research universities of 100 years ago, we find that they are still in the top rankings today. Others that joined AAU in its early years clearly have slipped according to today’s rankings. It is notable that the rise of others is only relatively recent, even though they are considered near the top of today’s rankings; earlier in the last century they didn’t rate. It’s also interesting to look at the number of years between the membership of different universities: Missouri got into the club in 1908, but it was 30 more years before Duke was considered good enough. Since then Duke has risen, but Missouri has fallen by today’s rankings. After Stony Brook and Texas A&M joined in 2001, it was 9 more years before another university(Georgia Tech) was invited to join.</p>

<p>Founding Members, 1900: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Yale, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Michigan
1904: University of Virginia
1908: Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri
1909: Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas
1916: Ohio State University
1917: Northwestern
1922: North Carolina
1923: Washington U
1926: Toronto, McGill
1929: Texas at Austin
1933: Brown
1934: Caltech, MIT
1938: Duke University
1941: University of Rochester
1950: U Washington, Vanderbilt, NYU
1958: Penn State, Purdue, Iowa State, Tulane
1964: Michigan State
1966: Syracuse, Colorado
1969: Maryland, Oregon, Southern Cal, Case Western Reserve
1974: UCLA, Pittsburgh
1982: Carnegie Mellon, UCSD
1985: Florida, Brandeis, Rice, Arizona
1989: Rutgers, SUNY-Buffalo
1995: Emory, UCSB
1996: UCD, UCI
2001: SUNY-Stony Brook, Texas A&M
2010: Georgia Tech</p>

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<p>That’s because there was no Duke. Duke was founded in 1924. It’s relatively young compared to peers.</p>

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<p>Really? I wasn’t aware that Duke was founded only in the twenties.
I could have picked another pair of unis.
So Duke did rise fairly quickly, as did Chicago and Stanford, which both date to the 1890s but were in founding group.</p>

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<p>Duke was founded in 1838. It changed its name several times, including most recently from Trinity University to Duke in 1924 (after James B. Duke donated $40 million to the school…essentially, they sold their naming rights!)</p>

<p>The AAU membership isn’t a ranking. It’s a consortium for the top research intensive universities to compare different measures like faculty salaries, etc. It doesn’t rank anyone, although its members could be considered the most prominent research school with some exceptions.</p>

<p>The most prominent ranking of research universities, at least in academic circles, is done by The Center for Measuring University Performance. ([homepage</a> is here](<a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/]homepage”>http://mup.asu.edu/)) It ranks the performance of each school in 9 specific areas, including both undergrad and graduate components, and then clusters institutions by how many of those areas place in the top 25, and secondly, from 26-50.</p>

<p>Here’s the first 25 listed schools (both public and private):</p>

<ol>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Cal-Berkley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Washington</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Minnesota</li>
<li>North Carolina</li>
<li>Washington Univ (St. Louis)</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>UC-San Diego</li>
<li>UCSF (no undergrad)</li>
<li>Ohio State</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>University of Pittsburgh</li>
</ol>

<p>The also do a separate cluster for public and private categories, placing schools according to the number of categories that fall within the top 25, and so on, for each institutional peer group.</p>

<p>Top Private Cluster (listed alphabetically):</p>

<p>Columbia University
Duke University
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Washington University (St. Louis)
Yale University</p>

<p>Top Public Cluster (listed alphabetical):</p>

<p>University of California - Berkley
University of California - Los Angeles
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh
University of Wisconsin - Madison</p>

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<p>Whether or not Duke was founded as Trinity College in 1838 is beside the point as there were no American research universities probably until Johns Hopkins opened in 1876. </p>

<p>Yes, I’m well aware that the AAU is not a ranking. The point of the post merely was that I thought it was interesting to see what universities were considered top research universities over the past 100 years. The AAU membership is one indicator of that. Nonetheless, it is a form of “peer assessment”. If you look at the membership criteria, membership is based on multiple criteria including federal resrearch monies awarded, faculty membership in the national academies, citation data, etc. as well as more qualitative criteria. [Association</a> of American Universities](<a href=“http://www.aau.edu/about/membership_information.aspx?id=1110]Association”>http://www.aau.edu/about/membership_information.aspx?id=1110)
These seem like the type of indicators that would lend themselves to ranking criteria (though those criteria were not in effect back when AAU was founded).</p>

<p>I’m aware of The Center for Measuring University Performance ranking. Too bad it wasn’t around 100 years ago.</p>

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<p>Two universities have “resigned” from AAU: Clark University and Catholic University of America. I believe both were founding members.</p>

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<p>^^^ You’re right, and it’s a good example of the rise and fall of universities (at least in terms of their perceived prestige.) I’m not sure about Catholic U.'s standing in 1900, but Clark certainly was considered a research university, at least in certain fields, e.g., Psychology and, possibly, Geography. I believe the AAU membership criteria mention the possibility of losing membership, so, yes, there is a question of whether they “resigned” or were asked to leave.</p>

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<p>Interesting that Stanford wasn’t even open for 10 years at the time and still got in.</p>

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<p>Back then, it did not take much for a university to catch up and become “World Class” relatively speaking. Chicago, Cornell, JHU, MIT and Stanford all rose to prominance within a decade of their founding.</p>

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<p>Why isn’t Dartmouth in the AAU? One would think as an Ivy it would have become a member long ago. It may be more focused on undergraduate education than other schools on the list, but if Brown is included so should Dartmouth.</p>

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<p>Alexandre wrote

True. As I recall Stanford raided (not out of character with Leland Stanford’s Robber Barron status) the Cornell faculty ranks for a good percentage of its tenured faculty right at the outset… it was sort of Cornell West. The Stanford Cardinal color is, I assume, an hommage to Cornell.</p>

<p>As I recall Berkeley had previously done something on a lesser scale with Yale’s faculty, thus cementing “Yale Blue” as the primary school color of all UCs.</p>

<p>The universities which have risen a lot in the past 25 years or so (USC, WashU) do seem like outliers, as it does take tremendous amounts of money, both private and state/federal, to operate a research aparautus. USC seems to have used this money to provide scholarships to NMF and others, thereby increasing the stats used to create the USNWR rankings. WashU… not sure what they’ve done, but I assume they’ve grabbed a lot of Federal research dollars for medical research, which in turn attracts top research faculty.</p>

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<p>Just FYI, Duke has been known as:
Brown School (1838–1841)
Union Institute (1841–1851)
Normal College (1851–1859)
Trinity College (1859–1924)
Duke University (1924-present)</p>

<p>That’s a lot of names.</p>

<p>I think matching up the AAU list against the CMUP rank would give a good indication how a school might have changed. A school like Syracuse probably wouldn’t get into the AAU today.</p>

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<p>Heck, that’s nothing. Harvard rose to be the top college in America within one hour of its founding.</p>

<p>;-)</p>

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<p>I noticed the Center for Measuring University Performance uses some raw figures where per capita figures would me much more relevant.</p>

<p>For example, they use raw endowment $, not Endownment / student. They use raw Research $, both Total and Federal, in place of $/student. That’s a pretty significant issue. The similarly fail to scale the # of Academy memberships, and Faculty Awards, # of Doctorates awarded, etc. to the faculty size. This can easily cause a smaller school like Caltech appear to have a weaker faculty, whereas the reality is they simply have a smaller faculty, but the % of faculty with memberships or awards is actually higher than schools apparently ranked above them.</p>

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<p>

Wrong, 'ruin.</p>

<p>Only Berkeley’s color is “Yale Blue”.</p>

<p>The other UC’s have different shades of blue, such as: blue (UCI), royal blue (UCM), pacific blue (UCSB), aggie blue (UCD) and “UCLA blue”. “UCLA blue” replaced sky blue in 2004 after the deal with Adidas…to make their football unis look more manly.</p>

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<p>OTOH large schools with major liberal arts and arts components, education schools etc are at a disadvanatge on many per capita meaures as these areas are not generally research heavy nor are they as likely to earn major memjberships in national academics and such. Most per capita type measures nearly always favor the smaller entitities. Also the benefits of endowments are not always linear.</p>

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<p>The most prominent ranking of research universities, at least in academic circles, is done by The Center for Measuring University Performance. (homepage is here) It ranks the performance of each school in 9 specific areas, including both undergrad and graduate components, and then clusters institutions by how many of those areas place in the top 25, and secondly, from 26-50.</p>

<p>Here’s the first 25 listed schools (both public and private):</p>

<ol>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Cal-Berkley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Washington</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Minnesota</li>
<li>North Carolina</li>
<li>Washington Univ (St. Louis)</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>UC-San Diego</li>
<li>UCSF (no undergrad)</li>
<li>Ohio State</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>

<h2>25. University of Pittsburgh</h2>

<p>wow, TOSU over Chicago, Princeton & Cornell!!! This is new to me! :D</p>

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<p>sparkeye,
Haha. Look for # 21 Ohio State to move up even further. Gordon Gee is working his magic again.</p>

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<p>“wow, TOSU over Chicago, Princeton & Cornell!!! This is new to me!”</p>

<p>Still way below Michigan, of course!. ;-)</p>

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<p>^^hawkette, Thanks for the kind words!! yea, President Gee has definitely turned tOSU upside down ever since he took over the helm in '07. He is currently in Shanghai debuting our new international gateway office according to the school’s website:</p>

<p>[Where</a> I Stand | Office of the President | The Ohio State University](<a href=“http://president.osu.edu/fromwhereistand/06_29_2010.php]Where”>http://president.osu.edu/fromwhereistand/06_29_2010.php)</p>

<p>rjk, that’s fine with me!! ;p </p>

<p>*Official TOSU $ multi-billion(s) $ fundraising campaign set to kick-off in 6-month!! lol~</p>