While it is true, as I noted previously, that some universities and most of their academic departments will hold up over time and across various “measures,” it is also true that a lot of the NRC rankings are based on snapshots of research, and that research is itself only a partial sample. Please see http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/09/a-quick-guide-to-the-new-national-research-council-rankings.html–and note that he refers to the USC philosophy department making rapid improvement over a decade. Well, the NRC data is a decade old, even if the report itself wasn’t issued until 4 years after the data was crunched.