<p>^^You hit the nail on the head, here when you said:
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<p>USNews bundles all faculty salaries together (full, associate, and assistant professors) thus, anytime a college experiences a large shift in seniority, as when a cohort of full-professors reaches retirement age and are replaced by new hires, it brings the entire faculty resources category down. LACs tend to hire junior faculty in order to promote them from within their own ranks. When this happens the colleges usually think they are doing a good thing by decreasing their student:faculty ratio when in fact, they are pulling their faculty resources rank down – at least according to the peculiar logic of USNews</p>