American Association of State Colleges and Universities


The American Association of State Colleges and Universities is an organization of state-supported colleges and universities that offer degree programs leading to bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees. AASCU grew out of the Association of Teacher Education Institutions that had been organized in 1951 to serve public comprehensive institutions. Most of the original member institutions began as single-purpose institutions, most commonly normal schools.

Purpose

The AASCU has a four-fold purpose:
Unlike the AASCU, the Association of American Universities is an organization of leading research universities primarily devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. It consists of approximately sixty public and private universities in the U.S. and Canada. AAU was founded in 1900 by a group of fourteen Ph.D.-granting universities in the U.S. to strengthen and standardize U.S. doctoral programs. Today, the primary purpose of the AAU is to provide a forum for the development and implementation of institutional and national policies promoting strong programs in academic research and scholarship and undergraduate, graduate, and professional education. A few institutions are members of both the AAU and the AASCU.

Membership

There are nearly 400 member institutions: .
See: List of members of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities