To Join or Not to Join? The Case of the International Association of Universities

On Friday, January 17, Jens Jungblut of the University of Oslo presented an EPS entitled, To Join or Not to Join? The Case of the International Association of Universities. The talk focused on his recent research into membership characteristics of the International Association of Universities (IAU) among the word’s institutions of higher education.

Jungblut started his inquiry wondering why the low rate of membership in this meta-organization is so low (approximately 3.2%). He listed several factors that would have favored wider participation such as increased globalization of higher education, rising importance of university alliances, credibility from bring an official partners of UNESCO, conferences and other educational opportunities, and the comparably low barriers to membership in terms of dues and selectivity.

Using the World Higher Education Database (WHED), his team was able to identify a pool of nearly 17,000 institutions from 191 countries to run multivariate logistic regression analyses with three models to compare profiles of IAU members with those of the sample. They also interviewed IAU staff at the organization’s headquarters in Paris to provide further context.

The team tested five core hypotheses about institutional members and found evidence to substantiate each one. They found universities ranked in the Times Higher Ed top 500 ranking were less likely to be members of IAU. The members also skewed younger. Members of IAU tended to be also members of the corresponding regional meta-organization, and had international offices and international studies programs.

Dr. Jungblut looks forward to continuing to explore the data for meaningful trends in membership. He found some significant regional differences. Oceania having the largest proportion of members and North American having the fewest. He also would like to test possible reverse causations in the relationships by tracking member characteristics at time of joining rather than.

Jungblut teaches in the Department of Political Science at University of Oslo with research interests in public governance in higher education and the role of academic research in policymaking. He earned his PhD from the University of Oslo and he holds a master’s degree from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

Access the presentation: Audio-only  |  Video