Stanford was actually a mediocre school in the 50's, and then the government started throwing money into defense spending and Stanford managed to get huge amoun

Stanford was actually a mediocre school in the 50's, and then the government started throwing money into defense spending and Stanford managed to get huge amounts of cash for research. It took decades, but there's reason to believe that just about any university could become the next Stanford with enough time and money (time being decades and money being tens of billions of dollars). If you want to see something interesting, look at what's happening in Pittsburgh right now with Carnegie Mellon and robotics. They have recently gotten huge influxes of cash and I think might be the hub for advanced manufacturing in the future. Of course, this actually started in the 70's, so it didn't take hold immediately.