<p>I don’t think that schools like Wisconsin have really ‘fallen’ - it’s just that these days people are more snobby toward public schools than they were then. It wasn’t so crazy back then that a public school could indeed be among the best. It may also have had something to do with funding; by 1910, the endowment-focused approach of private universities hadn’t really developed yet (although around 1900, Harvard had a $5 million endowment, Columbia $6 million, Stanford ~$40 million, and Chicago $50+ million). Public universities were going through a renaissance of sorts, with many of them established and funded by the Morrill acts. So back then, it was very possible that a public school was better-funded than a top private.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that Stanford still made it to the top 13 in 1910, a mere 4 years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed most of the campus. It wasn’t large either, with only 1,500 students in 1910 (yet it still produced enough eminent alumni to place decently on the list).</p>