<p>Bernie12, I actually think that Vandy’s faculty compares quite well to Emory’s (correct me if I’m wrong; I know that we have some big names here too).
However, the bigger names in academia have often been established through research which is not one of Vandy’s main focuses outside of medicine-related fields. Vandy provides tenure to faculty primarily based on undergraduate teaching ability, not research output.
Duke, however, definitely has the superior faculty. IIRC, Duke has 20-25 members of the National Academies while Vanderbilt has 8. I don’t think that either has a current Nobel Laureate on faculty. This also shows that both universities pale in comparison to a place like Stanford, which has around 250 members of the National Academies as well as 17 current Nobel Laureates on faculty. Of course, this is a rather cursory analysis, but you get the point.</p>