Uniwatcher, this is an interesting observation of yours (from the text in the updated table page) that I have never seen before. Kudos for this:
“Eleven of the 45 schools on the list below have no academic department ranked lower than 30th in the nation. The private elites in this group are Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell; the public universities in the group are UC Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, UCLA, and UT Austin.”
I think it is a natural inclination to scan for departments or schools which rank the highest, and I count myself here as well. I don’t normally scan for departments that may meet a lowest minimum standard, or rank. But to me, the near-even split of private and publics where all measured disciplines rank above 30 really speaks volumes about how these institutions maintain university-wide quality in their breadth.