quote:
USnews is not accurate.. LSU, UGA, A&M, and Kentucky all have improved their research profiles tremendously in recent years. The problem is that Usnews under-ranks large public universities by taking into account peer reviews, endowment per students, and other useless factors. Usnews is more indicative of "prestige" of a school than academics.

yea that's pretty much it,, the OP's subject line is also not accurate.

For example UGA has undergone a large increase in funding from enrollment and price hikes, largely due to the relatively recent lottery money(Hope Scholarship). They(you) have built a really nice, new multimillion dollar student commons, does that really have anything to do w/ academics? Not much, but it does make students feel better about themselves and their campus/school, hence the "rating" boost.

I'll go out on a limb right now and predict that the new money from the SECN will tremendously boost these type of construction projects and you will see the SEC schools all jump up on these lists. Prompting non-SEC schools to demand further delineation between academics and "campus spending projects" so as not to fall behind on these listings.

In the long run, I think the new money from the SECN will do a great deal academically for SEC schools. For example schools like aTm, UF, MSU, and Mizzou that take engineering seriously will have 10's of millions to upgrade those departments, use for research and increase salary's to draw the best professors. Over time the affect of the SEC Networks success will be seen academically and have a tremendous impact, but it won't happen over night.

This post was edited on 7/23/14 at 1:38 pm