quote:
quote:
They're nowhere near AAU status.

Is AAU a measurement of how adequately a university pushes leftist propaganda and programs their students?

Not at all actually, it's all about Research spending. The AAU is basically a sign your school gets a ridiculous amount of grants and does heavy duty research. The B1G is especially concerned about that because they work together to build a brand around it and get that money. There are 69 US Schools in the AAU (2 in Canada) and they dominate research spending. The SEC will have 5 after Texas joins (A&M, Texas, UF, Vandy, and Missouri). A&M and Texas are both at around $1.1 Billion in Research Spend and UF and Vandy are around $1 Billion.

Essentially it comes down to 5 main factors:
1. Research Spending
2. Med School on Campus
3. ABET Engineering School
4. Land Grant School
5. Politics

The Politics is the most annoying part and has screwed over the Southern and Mountain schools for the most part. The NE, B1G, and UC schools dominate and have very different bars of entry for schools based around that. I don't know how USF pulled off getting voted in though, that really surprised me.

SEC schools also suffer because very few have Med Schools on campus (if it's not on campus it doesn't "count"), Med Schools are massive Research spending machines. Most of them have a divided system of a Liberal Arts/Business focused Flagship, an Engineering/Ag focused Land Grant, and a Med School in a separate location.