how many people actually knew what the AAU is before this happened. Maybe it’s a PR move by academic types.

Doesn’t sound like too big a deal – also sounds like the AAU doesn’t place much value on Agricultural Research, and more value on having a medical school as part of the University.

With regards to Ag Research – sounds like elitist bullshit to me. Apparently people don’t need to eat. That the world’s population continues to grow and there is interest in using bio-everything for fuel, you think it’d have more value than that.

Medical School – Hell, maybe they ought to just restructure and include UNO as part of UNL. What’s to stop that? Eliminate redundancy, save some money, take UNO’s hockey team and their medical school.

Dropping majors – the program my oldest son was going to go into was cut as part of that budget cut, so now we’re starting over from scratch. I’m not sure where he’s going to go to school, but I know this – he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine because he’s a bright young man, he’s healthy, and he has at least one normal parent – his mother.

Well I don’t think its a huge deal, but its still kind of embarrassing.

Also nice to hear (from the LJS article) that all the Big 12 members voted against kicking us out.

it is actually a REALLY big deal. There are 3 major things about AAU membership:
1. AAU membership was one of the criteria for the Big 10 when making selections. They will act like this does not matter in public, but I guarantee you in private this really angers the entire conference. The Big 10 has held their had on the idea that all members of the conference are AAU members for a while now and this is just going to lead continuing the stereotype that Neb is just a bunch of uneducated hicks.

2. AAU is one of the major keys that is looked at when dispersing research funding. The comment about being in the in the top x amount in % increase is a throw away number. The study does not mention % of the national whole or number of dollars compared to the AAU average but is in reference to the % increase the school has had over the time frame. While it is great to see the overall increase and growth in research dollars, lets not forget that it also is telling that that much of an increase still puts Neb well below most of the rest of the AAU. Without the AAU tag, those gains can easily go to ISU and Iowa as stay with Neb.

3. AAU membership is a key component in bringing in graduate students and faculty. Most of that is due to name recognition and the ability to have AAU affiliation with your degree or your scholarly research. Combine that with point 2 in regards to who gets what funding, and AAU is a great carrot to bring in the top young researchers in the country. Why go to a non-AAU school if you are qualified to go to an AAU? People tend to pick the easier path and the AAU membership helps provide funding and better colleagues in research opportunities.

Academics is a self perpetuating cycle. The problem is that it takes quite a bit of effort to get the engine running at a point that it can keep on sustaining itself.

Let us also not forget that the CIC membership is not an automatic given. Big 10 schools voted against Neb in keeping the AAU status, so it is not an automatic slam dunk the the CIC will now vote Neb in.

I am not trying to sit here and say the sky is falling, but this from an academic standpoint is a much much bigger deal than people are making of it.

This has come at by far the worst possible time (outside of it happening last summer and killing any possible Big 10 invite) due to the CIC approval in June and the entrance into the Big 10.

Why isn’t your Medical branch part of your UNL campus? This just seems like such a no brainer to add it 10 years ago when this was first brought up that I am curious as to why it wasn’t done.

I sense ulterior motives. But you’d think that if the oust was because of the Big Ten move that most, if not all of the old Big 12 schools would’ve voted against UNL…

we will be fine long-term.

But for the rest of my time on this planet, I think we can kiss the AAU group good-bye for the next 60 or so years. There are many schools that trump Neb. research $$$$ that are not in the group, like Georgia, that Neb would fall behind.

Damn, right when everything seemed like it was going well, new research park, Big Ten membership, endowment increases, then this happens. You want to know why learning math and the hard sciences are important for kids today, there you go.

Sounds like not only does UNL ag research not count, but actually hurts a school like Nebraska in that the ag school faculty are basically deadweight.

link

“We have known we were at risk of this for 10 years and successfully fought off a similar threat in 2000,” he said.

The presidents of the Big Ten had to know that Nebraska was near the bottom of the AAU in whatever ranking system(s) they used. If Nebraska had to hold off the vultures once before, then the possibility of them having to do it again was there. No school had been voted out before, but the presidents of the Big Ten Unversities had to know before they invited Nebraska in, that this possibility could have happened.

Also, I don’t think Nebraska will be the last school that ends up getting voted out.

The perception that arises from this (particularly among the haters, who will go to town on ANY bit of dirt they can latch onto— like the petty, jealous cretins over at BOTC) is that UNL was sleeping on the job and got justly fired for it.

In reality, this is akin to getting fired because your socks didn’t match— a matter of semantics and bias. But alas, UNL now has to deal with the perception issue. I’d really like to know how Jim Delaney feels about this, especially since at least one Big Ten school voted against UNL.