UNL joined the AAU in 1909. Perlman said UNL has ranked at the bottom of the AAU's members for more than a decade based on the group's ranking system, which ranks all research universities. That ranking system consists of four criteria: research expenditures, National Academy members, faculty awards (from a specified list) and citations.
Those criteria are weighted based on the number of tenure-track faculty at a particular university. Based on those criteria, a number of non-AAU institutions ranked higher than 15 AAU institutions, including UNL, Perlman said.
He said those four criteria unfairly disadvantaged UNL because the University of Nebraska system is organized with separate flagship (UNL) and medical campuses (the University of Nebraska Medical Center). Most AAU institutions have medical schools, which tend to garner large amounts of research dollars, Perlman said.
"With UNMC's research included we would have had research expenditures above many other AAU institutions," he said.
Another disadvantage that UNL faced was that the AAU devalues agricultural research and doesn't allow member universities to include research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a major source of funding for UNL. However, the association does count agricultural faculty when weighting rankings, Perlman said.
"Because of our strong commitment as a land-grant institution to serving the State of Nebraska, we are seriously disadvantaged within the AAU ranking system," he said.
