[Crawford]

I think it was a forgone conclusion that the UCs would be strong. The Western half of the nation was mostly empty until the postwar years, and had almost no universities of note. Then there was a huge population/wealth explosion, mostly led by knowledge industries. There were few legacy institutions, so they were built.

And CA's population is high(er) income, more educated, more professionally employed, and more heavily Asian than U.S. norms, so you're gonna see good universities.

You see the same thing in TX, FL and AZ in more recent years. The state institutions have risen up the rankings. Probably less to do with good public policy and more to do with increasing selectivity as the population has risen. It makes sense that (say) Florida would have outperformed (say) Ohio in the last few decades, as selectivity is largely a function of local K-12 student population trends.

There are a few schools, the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, where local demographic trends are largely irrelevant, bc their draw is national and global. But they're very relevant for most schools.

And demographic trends would be more relevant in the higher growth states, bc they tend to have fewer private or legacy institutions. Over the last 50 years, it was harder for (say) UConn to be highly selective compared to (say) UCSD, bc UConn has a billion competing institutions in proximity, and had flat local student population trends.