The US News rankings are based on the following factors:
Graduation and retention rates (22.5 percent):
Graduation rates is 80% of the score, while the first year retention rate is 20%.
Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent):
The academic peer assessment accounts for 15 percentage points while the high school counselors survey accounts for 7.5 percentage points.
Faculty Resources (20 percent):
Class size is 40% of the measure, Faculty salary is 35%, proportion of professors with the highest degree in their field is 15%, student-faculty ratio is 5%, and the proportion of faculty who are full time is 5%.
Student selectivity (12.5 percent):
SAT and composite ACT scores make up 65%, proportion of enrolled first-year students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes is 25%, acceptance rate is 10%.
Financial resources (10 percent):
The average spending per student on instruction, research and student services. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals don’t count.
Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent)
This measure was tweaked a bit this year. It’s how US New’s predicted graduation rate compares to the actual graduation rate.
Alumni giving rate (5 percent):
Used as an indirect measure of student satisfaction.
While UA’s student selectivity has increased, it’s graduation/retention rates are still fairly low, as compared to it’s peers. Also, as it’s been increasing the size of it’s undergraduate population, it’s not been keeping up with faculty. The student to faculty ratio is the worse it’s been in years (23 to 1), and I would guess that would also include class size, etc.
UA will need to stop increasing it’s undergraduate population, and start increasing the size of it’s faculty.
UA’s new strategic plan will address those issues with faculty recruitment being one of the 4 main goals…
https://www.ua.edu/news/2016/08/ua-announces-strategic-plan-for-advancing-the-flagship/
I think the old strategic plan, focused on undergraduate student recruitment, has set the foundation for this next step. If they can pull it off (and it will require funding), then the end result will be an increase in the ratings. The increase will happen because UA is doing the right things to build the university, not by gaming the “system” to increase it’s ranking.