One of the reasons UC scores relatively lower in USN&WR and other rankings is because it offers a lot of cooperative education opportunities, primarily in engineering and business, which are mandatory five-year majors (incidentally, UC pioneered the concept of cooperative higher education more than a century ago). Participating students gain OJT, earn income, and build their pre-graduation resumes, but those programs obviously affect the university's four-year graduation rates, an important metric rating entities rely upon to ascertain rankings. Perhaps you should be asking yourself why, if Cincy is ranked so low, it attracts more research dollars and has more successful alumni able and willing to contribute to the school's endowment?