The latest news here.  There was a long period of time when USC was known mainly as an undistinguished, but expensive private school for kids who couldn't get into UCLA.  That has changed quite a bit over the last thirty years, but really picked up momentum since the start of the new century.  The Philosophy Department, as readers will know, has been one beneficiary of that change, but across the university, USC has been making high-profile appointments in a variety of fields, offering both highly competitive salaries and enormous housing subsidies.  (Unlike NYU, which has pursued a similar strategy for the past twenty years, USC does not have substantial housing of its own to offer as enticements for faculty.)   With the continuing neoliberal assault on the public sector, and USC's growing wealth, I would expect this trend to continue.   While the school still has a long way to go before breaking into the top 20 research universities in the U.S. (NYU has already managed that, despite relatively weak natural sciences), I would expect they will do it over the next generation.