The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 63 universities in the United States (both public and private) and two universities in Canada. AAU membership is by invitation only and requires an affirmative vote of three-quarters of current members. The AAU was founded on February 28, 1900, by a group of 14 Doctor of Philosophy degree-granting universities in the United States to strengthen and standardize American doctoral programs. American universities—starting with Johns Hopkins University in 1876—were adopting the research-intensive German model of higher education. Lack of standardization damaged European universities' opinions of their American counterparts and many American students attended graduate school in Europe instead of staying in the U.S. The presidents of Harvard University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California sent a letter of invitation to nine other universities—Clark University, Catholic University of America, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University—to meet in Chicago in February 1900 to promote and raise standards. The AAU's founding members elected Harvard's Charles William Eliot as the association's first president and Stanford's David Starr Jordan as its first chairman. More information...
According to PR-model, aau.edu is ranked 24,617th in multilingual Wikipedia, in particular this website is ranked 17,573rd in English Wikipedia.
The website is placed before quechoisir.org and after bollywood.com in the BestRef global ranking of the most important sources of Wikipedia.
