Acknowledging all the necessary caveats about how dumb and easily gameable these rankings can be, it is worth noting that private schools outside the ivys and near-ivys have as a group taken a hit in these lists over the years. This is not a Syracuse-specific problem. So many state schools, and I'm not talking about the public ivys that have competed with the very best privates for a very long time, have shot up the rankings over the past twenty or so years because of the huge rise in college expenses attracting more and more high achieving middle class kids to their lower costs vis-a-vis second and third tier privates. Second and third tier U of California campus have moved into the top fifty over the past couple of decades precisely because there are so many good in-state students who can't get into Berkeley or UCLA but also don't want to pay to go to a second tier private out of state. In other states, the flagships have risen up the ranks because in-state students are opting for a public education rather than going to Syracuse or GWU or Boston U. and paying double for what they increasingly see as a comparable education. See the rise of Rutgers, UMD, Penn State, and Delaware.
This is not an easily resolvable problem. The donors need to focus on setting up scholarship funds and less on expensive sports like football (sorry guys). The impending Cold war with China also doesn't help the financial model of a lot of private schools in the Northeast that relied on Chinese students paying full fare. International students made up upwards of a third of Boston U.'s undergrad population until Covid hit.
Some big schools with long histories are going to go under unless major changes to their business models are made. The upshot is that the survivors will get healthier by picking the meat off their bones.
