Yes, UF’s rise has been due to increase funding and student excellence.
In a few days, I’ll post something on how UF (and the other state universities) were able to improve funding (from multiple sources). Understanding how we got to this point today, will help show how UF will trend in the future (vs other public research universities).
The Lincoln Project put out several papers, a few years ago, on what they term “Public Research Universities” and the challenges they face. One article explains the financial model used by this universities. I highly recommend looking it over.
Section 3 in the article describes how public universities have responded. Florida’s response was different. The state of Florida bucked the trend by increasing state funding (a few years after the recession of 2008, which devastated all public universities, including Florida’s), did not significantly increase tuition, and did not become dependent on out of state tuition.