The ranking data was collected from https://publicuniversityhonors.com as well as a public dataset provided by Andrew Reiter (cited below). I then went through manually to make sure each one was correct.
I have also created an online representation of the data which can be viewed here: https://www.aronfrishberg.com/projects/usnews
This data is entirely for free, public use.
Andrew G. Reiter, “U.S. News & World Report Historical Liberal Arts College and University Rankings,” available at: http://andyreiter.com/datasets/