We know the reasons it's difficult.
- Undergraduate emphasis
- Lack of funding

Even our vaunted accounting program is only #50 in research.

A friend of mine who started his PhD in physics at BYU (but followed his professor to WVU) said we can become a power in international studies because of the high number of students who've lived abroad, and with superior linguistic abilities compared to the rest of the population.

Another possibility is to become a religious studies power, due to sheer numbers. For example, Duke has two New Testament professors in its religious studies department, and seven in its divinity school. We have 40 professors in the ancient scripture department. They have larger teaching loads than Duke, but with sheer size they can produce just a fraction of the output on a per professor basis, and still match their total output. And although LDS still face obstacles obstacles to publishing in religion, mainstream academic venues, especially Oxford Press are publishing more books on Mormonism than before.

This is what Michael Porter calls a non-replicable strategy, and for this reason Notre Dame dominates philosophy of religion.

Unfortunately, professors aren't incentivized to publish in mainstream journals or venues; they can get tenure by publishing in Deseret book. And word is the department is trending towards hiring more CES personnel, instead of people with doctorates in the subject matter.