The intent of these lists be it Forbes or US News is solely to sell magazines. The unfortunate part is that the public does value the opinions expressed in them.
With that all said, USF has some problems. The graduation rate needs improving, the ratio of Grad students to Undergrads isnt comparable to more reputable Universities, those PhD's that USF does produce are not in demand by other reputable Universities and lastly Judy and crew need to accept that USF will never be an AAU member.
I'm confident that the University has nowhere to go but up, but I think we should be focused on building a foundation before reaching for the stratosphere.