Re: Big Ten Conference Tournament
UNL got kicked out of the AAU somewhat recently (they had been on probation for about a decade, I think), and they were contending that they would have met the minimum requirements had they been allowed to count their medical school (also if agricultural research was counted, but it's excluded as places like the USDA don't use a competitive bidding procedure for research grants). Other universities with med schools a similar distance away have been allowed to count it towards their research output, but it all depends on the administrative structure. I don't know if the necessary changes would be feasible, or if the AAU would be willing to let UNL back in even if they could get back up to the bare minimum standards for membership, but that would be the impetus behind such a move.
O.K., I will throw this one into the "plausible theory" category.
The AAU actually had been threatening to toss UNL for even longer than a decade. Harvey Perlman (UNL Chancellor) said publicly back in April '11 when UNL got tossed that they had tried to boot UNL back in 2000 and that they had somehow managed to stave this off for a
long time before it finally happened.
From the Lincoln Journal Star on the topic:
Perlman said the AAU's four criteria were unfair disadvantages for UNL because the NU 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 get 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 UNL faced, Perlman said, was the AAU policy of not allowing 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," Perlman said in his email.
He said AAU membership policies also provide consideration for an institution's trajectory, something Perlman believed should have convinced the group's members to allow UNL to remain. Among AAU institutions, UNL has the seventh-largest percentage growth in research expenditures in the past decade, he said. In addition, the university is a leader and partner in research with all of the highest-ranked AAU institutions, he said.
Now, with all this being said, I still maintain that I have never heard even a breadth of a rumor that that anything like merging schools was or has ever been discussed. Additionally, Perlman is bemoaning the non-inclusion of UNMC (the Medical School, whose campus is also located in Omaha like UNO's is) by the AAU into the overall University system dossier. He doesn't say a word about UNO being a part of the scenario and the medical school is on another campus entirely from UNO here in Omaha, albeit within about a 2-3 mile drive on the same street. I don't understand how merging with UNO solves UNL's AAU problems, based on what Perlman says the issues are.
If this was even being rumored, the megagiganticness of such a possibility here would be difficult to keep under wraps if it were even being discussed. If true, the story, in this state, would rival UNL's conference switch in size, even. It would easily and instantly become one of the top news stories of not just the year but of the past few decades in this state.
I am going to start asking around about this one just because your theory isn't totally implausible but my bet is that anybody I ask about it is going to say that it's the first they've heard of it. It's certainly the first I've heard of it. And, while I don't believe it's true I do think somebody may have floated the idea at some point even if just over beers somewhere, some time, and I'm now curious to know if this has
any credence at all.
Here's the entire Journal Star article, by the way:
http://journalstar.com/news/local/e...ljtweet&utm_source=ljtweet&utm_medium=ljtweet
