1. Transparent, Merit-Based Admissions
The American University of Rome is committed to an admissions process that is transparent, equitable, and directly connected to the University’s educational mission. AUR currently publishes its principal undergraduate admissions requirements, including a minimum high-school GPA of 3.0. For U.S. applicants, SAT and ACT scores are optional. AUR also states publicly that applicants are reviewed individually, with consideration given to academic preparation and improvement, the rigor of the applicant’s secondary-school program, leadership, motivation, activities, and demonstrated potential for growth.
AUR also maintains an equal-opportunity policy under which qualified individuals receive equal opportunity in the University’s educational programs and activities without discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics.
Applicants are entitled to understand not merely how to apply but how their applications will be evaluated. AUR is committed to publishing a clear and comprehensive description of the factors used in undergraduate and graduate admissions, distinguishing minimum eligibility requirements from the academic and educational considerations used in holistic review. Where different programs require different qualifications, those requirements are separately and clearly identified.
Admissions decisions serve AUR’s educational purpose: identifying students who are prepared to benefit from rigorous American-style higher education in an international environment and who demonstrate the academic preparation, achievement, motivation, and potential necessary to succeed. AUR will not use proxies or informal procedures designed to circumvent applicable nondiscrimination requirements. Admissions officers apply documented criteria consistently, and the University periodically reviews admissions outcomes and procedures to ensure that decisions remain tied to legitimate educational considerations.
These commitments are consistent with AUR’s mission to prepare students to live and work across cultures as skilled and knowledgeable citizens while promoting intellectual excellence, personal growth, and academic achievement.
2. Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and Protection Against Disruption
The free exchange of ideas is indispensable to university education. AUR’s existing Faculty Handbook expressly recognizes academic freedom and endorses the principles of the AAUP's 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom. Faculty are granted freedom to teach, conduct research, publish findings, and discuss relevant subject matter even where conclusions may be unpopular. The same policy emphasizes accuracy, intellectual responsibility, and respect for differing opinions.
AUR applies these principles across the broader university community. Students and faculty must be free to question prevailing assumptions, invite speakers, disagree with one another, examine controversial subjects, and express lawful viewpoints without fear that institutional authorities will punish them merely because their ideas are unpopular.
Freedom of expression does not, however, include a right to prevent others from speaking, studying, teaching, or working. AUR's student-conduct framework already gives the University authority to discipline students whose conduct violates University regulations or applicable Italian law.
AUR will maintain a clear distinction between protected expression and prohibited conduct. Peaceful demonstration, criticism, questioning, counter-speech, and protest are protected. Violence, threats, physical obstruction, vandalism, targeted harassment, unauthorized occupation of University facilities, and sustained disruption of classes, examinations, research, lectures, or essential campus operations are subject to prompt and viewpoint-neutral disciplinary action.
The University communicates procedures for demonstrations and major campus events; trains appropriate personnel in de-escalation and event safety; protects invited speakers and audience members; and ensures that disciplinary rules are enforced consistently regardless of the political or ideological position of those involved. The purpose is not to suppress protest. It is to preserve the conditions in which both protest and the University's academic work can take place.
Here is our official free speech policy:
The American University of Rome educates students to live and work across cultures as thoughtful, skilled citizens of a globalized world. Our mission—to provide a liberal arts education within an international, interdisciplinary environment where Rome itself serves as a living classroom—depends on intellectual openness and mutual respect.
AUR seeks to nurture academic excellence, personal growth, and an appreciation for cultural diversity. These goals require a community willing to question, debate, and exchange ideas across cultural and religious divides, because it is through such engagement that students learn to address complex problems with creativity and an eye toward sustainable solutions.
As a liberal arts institution, AUR is devoted to exploring, generating, and disseminating knowledge. Every belief, practice, idea, and institution is open to careful examination. The University encourages conversations that challenge assumptions, scrutinize social arrangements, and inspire new understanding. Our highest calling is to cultivate curiosity, empathy, and the courage to pursue hard questions—habits of mind that prepare graduates to thrive amid global challenges and diverse perspectives.
Because our purpose is the education of all students, the University does not issue statements on contested political and public matters or engage in actions that would risk discouraging minority opinions and narrowing the space for dialogue we are bound to protect. This decision to refrain from political pronouncements is not based on indifference or withdrawal from the world; it is a deliberate commitment to safeguard the freedom of every member to speak, question, and act according to conscience.
In rare and exceptional circumstances—when the University’s core mission or the conditions that make free inquiry possible are directly threatened—AUR may act collectively to defend its independence and the principles that sustain it. Such action reflects not partisanship but loyalty to the values that enable genuine dialogue.
The strength of The American University of Rome rests not on wealth or political leverage, but on integrity, intellectual rigor, and the vibrant diversity of its community. By remaining faithful to its mission—educating students to think critically, engage across cultures, and work toward sustainable solutions through courageous dialogue—AUR as an academic community serves society more profoundly than any partisan declaration by the Administration could ever achieve.
3. Intellectual Pluralism, Faculty Excellence, and Research
AUR's academic mission is fundamentally educational rather than partisan. Its Faculty Handbook defines the University's purpose in terms of intellectual excellence, interdisciplinary learning, research, cultural understanding, and the preparation of knowledgeable citizens. It also recognizes faculty members' freedom in research, publication, and teaching.
Intellectual pluralism does not require universities to engineer predetermined ideological balances. It does require academic units to remain genuinely open to evidence, competing explanations, methodological disagreement, and serious scholarly viewpoints.
AUR expects programs to expose students, where relevant to the discipline, to significant competing schools of thought rather than presenting contested propositions as though no serious disagreement exists. Curricular and program reviews consider whether students encounter meaningful intellectual diversity and learn how to assess arguments on their merits.
Faculty recruitment likewise focuses on scholarly or professional accomplishment, teaching ability, disciplinary competence, research potential where applicable, and contribution to AUR's educational mission. Political conformity does not function as an employment criterion. Searches are sufficiently broad to attract excellent candidates from varied intellectual and professional backgrounds.
Faculty evaluation rewards excellent teaching, rigorous scholarship or professional contribution, meaningful service, and continued intellectual development. AUR already conducts faculty evaluation and identifies teaching effectiveness as an important consideration in faculty assessment.
Research is evaluated according to scholarly quality, methodological integrity, significance, and contribution to knowledge—not according to whether its findings advance a preferred political outcome. AUR's location and international faculty give the University a particular opportunity to contribute to American and international understanding of Europe, the Mediterranean, archaeology and cultural heritage, international relations, business, communication, food systems, tourism, psychology, and other fields represented in its curriculum.
The appropriate test for academic research remains: Is the line of inquiry important? Is the methodology sound? Is the evidence treated honestly? Are contrary findings and explanations considered? And does the work advance knowledge and understanding?
4. Affordability, Transparency, Employment, and Student Outcomes
AUR recognizes that the value of higher education cannot be separated from its cost or its outcomes. As a nonprofit institution, AUR states that institutional revenues are reinvested in its services rather than distributed to investors. The University publishes tuition and fee schedules as well as financial-aid information, including estimated cost-of-attendance information. Its published tuition schedules for the 2026–2027 academic year allow prospective students and families to examine costs before enrolling.
For eligible U.S. students, AUR participates in the U.S. Department of Education's William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program and publishes extensive information regarding federal borrowing requirements and limits.
Price transparency goes further than publishing tuition alone. AUR provides prospective students with an understandable estimate of the full cost of completing each degree—including tuition, mandatory fees, typical housing and living expenses, and other significant program-specific costs—along with realistic information about scholarships and borrowing.
AUR already makes retention, graduation, and post-graduation pathway information available through its Student Consumer Information resources. The University continues to strengthen the accessibility of these disclosures and, where reliable data permit, provide program-level information regarding completion, postgraduate education, employment sectors, internships, and other meaningful outcomes.
Career preparation is not confined to traditionally vocational majors. Every AUR program identifies the knowledge and transferable skills graduates are expected to possess and demonstrate how its curriculum develops them. Those skills may include analytical reasoning, writing, quantitative competence, communication, digital literacy, research, teamwork, foreign-language or cross-cultural competence, and field-specific expertise.
Experiential learning also remains central. AUR has emphasized internships and professional experience as an important component of its educational model and reports substantial student participation in internships.
Finally, the University periodically reviews programs for enrollment, completion, educational quality, cost, career relevance, and student demand. Programs that impose substantial costs without delivering adequate educational value are improved, restructured, or reconsidered. Our responsibility is not to guarantee a particular salary to every graduate—something no responsible institution can do—but to ensure that students understand the financial commitment they are making and that every degree provides a serious educational foundation for productive employment, further study, citizenship, and professional development.
5. Academic Rigor, Artificial Intelligence, and Grade Inflation
Artificial intelligence makes academic rigor more important than ever.
AUR's academic regulations already state that integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise and prohibit students from submitting work that is not their own, purchasing or borrowing assignments, misappropriating another person's knowledge, or failing properly to acknowledge sources. The University also maintains procedures for reporting plagiarism and imposes escalating sanctions for repeated or intentional violations.
Generative AI requires these principles to be made more explicit. AUR maintains a university-wide framework under which instructors clearly identify permitted, restricted, and prohibited uses of AI in their courses and assignments. Students are required to disclose material use of generative AI when instructed to do so and remain personally accountable for the accuracy, originality, citations, reasoning, and intellectual content of work submitted in their names.
At the same time, AUR does not attempt simply to prohibit a technology students will encounter throughout professional life. Students learn how AI works, where it fails, how to verify its output, how it affects different professions, and how to use it ethically and productively.
Assessment methods evolve accordingly. Faculty make greater use, where academically appropriate, of oral examinations and defenses, supervised writing, drafts and revision histories, in-class work, individualized research assignments, practical demonstrations, project-based assessment, and assignments requiring students to apply course material to specific experiences or evidence. Rome itself offers AUR an unusual advantage in this regard: on-site learning, field research, cultural institutions, original observation, internships, and experiential assignments are substantially harder to replace with generic machine-generated work.
Academic rigor also requires confidence in the meaning of grades. AUR regularly reviews grade distributions at the course, program, and institutional levels. Significant unexplained changes prompt academic review—not to impose arbitrary grading quotas, but to determine whether standards and assessments continue to distinguish levels of student achievement appropriately.
Faculty are supported and recognized for demanding, well-designed courses, substantive feedback, clearly articulated learning outcomes, and assessments that genuinely measure student learning. Excellence in teaching must mean more than student satisfaction; it must include evidence that students have acquired the knowledge and skills a course promises to teach.
6. Foreign Influence and Research Integrity
AUR occupies a distinctive position: it is an American-accredited, U.S. nonprofit university physically located in Italy, with an international faculty and student body. AUR is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, is recognized by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research as an American university authorized to operate in Italy, and participates in U.S. federal student-aid programs. Its Italian operating authorization was renewed in December 2025 through December 2030.
International engagement is therefore intrinsic to AUR's mission. But international engagement must not mean unexamined foreign influence.
AUR applies appropriate due diligence to significant foreign gifts, grants, contracts, partnerships, and sponsored academic activities. Agreements preserve the University's control over curriculum, academic appointments, admissions, research methods, publication, and academic conclusions. Gifts or partnerships carrying conditions inconsistent with academic independence, applicable law, research integrity, or institutional governance are rejected.
The University maintains clear conflict-of-interest and conflict-of-commitment requirements for employees involved in externally funded activity and require appropriate disclosure of outside relationships.
Where research, data, technology, or collaboration creates security concerns, AUR complies with applicable U.S., Italian, and European legal requirements governing sanctions, controlled technology, privacy, research security, and access. Appropriate cybersecurity controls and access restrictions are proportionate to the sensitivity of the information involved.
Because AUR is predominantly a liberal-arts and professionally oriented institution rather than a large defense or classified-research university, its risk profile differs substantially from that of a major science and engineering research institution. Nevertheless, the principle is the same: foreign affiliation or nationality is not itself treated as evidence of wrongdoing, but no foreign government, entity, donor, or individual is permitted covertly to dictate academic decisions or obtain improper access to sensitive information.
Academic collaboration remains open wherever it is lawful, transparent, reciprocal, and consistent with institutional independence.
7. Serving American Students and the American National Interest
AUR can make an important contribution to the United States precisely because it is an American university situated in Europe.
The University's mission is to prepare students to live and work across cultures as knowledgeable citizens of an interconnected world, using Rome, Italy, and Europe as educational resources. That mission is compatible with—and can materially advance—American interests.
The United States needs graduates who understand foreign societies, speak and work effectively across cultures, distinguish reliable information from propaganda, understand democratic institutions and international markets, and can operate successfully with allies, competitors, businesses, governments, and international organizations. An American institution in Rome is exceptionally well positioned to develop those capabilities.
AUR strengthens its contribution to American prosperity and security in several concrete ways.
First, AUR ensures that American students have meaningful access to its programs through transparent pricing, financial aid, transfer pathways, veterans' benefits where applicable, and careful stewardship of U.S. federal student-aid programs. AUR is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as an eligible foreign institution for the Federal Direct Loan Program.
Second, the curriculum develops skills relevant to urgent American workforce needs: strong writing and communication, analytical reasoning, digital and AI literacy, business competence, cross-cultural negotiation, responsible leadership, research ability, and knowledge of international political and economic systems. Professional and experiential learning reinforce those skills.
Third, AUR uses its location to deepen U.S.–European ties. Faculty research, public programming, partnerships, and student experiences can strengthen understanding of NATO allies and European institutions, Mediterranean security, cultural heritage, migration, international commerce, tourism, food systems, communications, and other issues with direct implications for U.S. interests.
Fourth, AUR continues to measure whether its programs actually produce the educational outcomes they promise. Institutional assessment is already part of AUR's governance structure through strategic-plan assessment, departmental assessment, and institutional research. Those processes increasingly examine student learning, completion, employment and further-study pathways, and the relevance of programs to emerging social and economic needs.
Finally, serving the American interest does not require AUR to abandon its international identity. A university situated abroad provides greatest value to the United States when it gives Americans serious engagement with the rest of the world rather than insulating them from it. AUR's international students and faculty are an educational asset: they expose American students to perspectives, institutions, histories, and professional networks that cannot be replicated on a domestic campus.
AUR can therefore answer this national call by remaining unmistakably committed to the fundamental strengths of American higher education—academic freedom, rigorous inquiry, merit, institutional independence, transparency, educational opportunity, and the pursuit of knowledge—while using its unique position in Rome to prepare graduates capable of contributing to American economic strength, democratic resilience, international leadership, and long-term security.