CamelCityDeac
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Wake's national ranking has nothing to do with research (at least as far as USNWR is concerned). The only place where this could be true is when they have guidance counselors rate the school, and they don't really know much about graduate programs for the most part. If research was that important to rankings, there is literally no way in hell that Wake makes the top 50, certainly not ahead of Michigan or UNC. We aren't being ranked highly in spite of a lack of research, we are ranked highly because we are perceived to be a top school. Wake doesn't want to be a research-oriented institution either; instead, they focus on undergraduate education and are ranked highly for having teach-first policies. Honestly, if Wake is looking to expand any programs it should look first at computer science and math (including it's new stats major). Those will be critically important to have around as computer science is the most in demand major and pays well, while math and statistics are versatile degrees that will also increase pay.
For reference: Wake's undergraduate teaching ranking http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandr.../national-universities/undergraduate-teaching
EDIT: Also, here's the USNWR national university ranking criteria http://www.usnews.com/education/bes...us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings.
Basic Breakdown goes like this:
22.5% Undergrad reputation (this is supposed to be peers measuring how committed professors at other institutions are to teaching along with guidance counselors scores which hurt Wake because we aren't as well known as say a UNC)
20% retention rate
20% faculty resources (measures student:faculty ratio, faculty salary, and how many have the terminal degree in their field (typically a Ph.D.))
15% student selectivity (ACT/SAT scores, top 10% of graduating class, acceptance rate)
10% financial resources (how much does a college spend on each student)
7.5% graduation rate
5% alumni giving rate
As you can see, research isn't really supposed to be involved in USNWR rankings. If it is, it would have to come into play with the undergrad reputation but the questionnaires they send out for those aren't supposed to be designed to measure that. Where we get hurt, I think, is that our endowment isn't the size of the universities in the top 20 (less funding per student), we aren't as well known as some (lower guidance counselor score), and our selectivity rate would be well below average for a top 20. That's why Wake will remain where it is. Although, the admission rate did drop from 40 to 34 percent so that should help some, our retention and graduation rates are fine, our faculty resources are pretty good and with all these budget cuts we might be able to spend more per student then some other public universities. So who knows. But if Wake wants to break into the top 20, it will need to become much more selective and increase brand recognition.
Last edit, I swear. If you look at Emory (currently ranked 20th) they have a score of 82, while Wake has a score of 77. So if we want to break into the top 20 we'd have to break an 82 (assuming other schools scores don't go up with us). It'd be really hard to improve any one of those categories enough to get us the five points to enter the top 20. Our best bet is to try to increase them all. It's a lot easier to increase faculty resources, student selectivity and undergrad reputation by a couple points each than it would be to vigorously increase either one. In any case, it'd be fairly difficult to go up 5 points, that's a pretty wide gap.
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