University of Massachusetts Boston

The University of Massachusetts Boston is a public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massachusetts system. UMass Boston is the third most diverse university in the United States. While a majority of UMass Boston students are Massachusetts residents, international students and students from other states make up a significant portion of the student body. Founded with a distinct urban mission, UMass Boston has a long history of serving the city of Boston, including numerous partnerships with local community organizations. It is an official member institution of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities and the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The University of Massachusetts system dates back to the founding of Massachusetts Agricultural College under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1863. However, prior to the founding of UMass Boston, the Amherst campus was the only public, comprehensive university in the state. Even as late as the 1950s, Massachusetts ranked at or near the bottom in public funding per capita for higher education, and proposals to expand the University of Massachusetts into Boston was opposed both by faculty and administrators at the Amherst campus and by the private colleges and universities in Boston. In 1962, the Massachusetts General Court expanded the University of Massachusetts system for the first time to Worcester, Massachusetts with the creation of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 1963, UMass President John W. Lederle informed the General Court that more than 1,200 graduates of Boston area high schools qualified to attend the University of Massachusetts were denied admission to the Amherst campus due to lack of space, and despite opposition from the Amherst campus, endorsed expanding the UMass system with a commuter campus in Boston. At the time, there were 12,000 freshman applications to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with only 2,600 slots, yet the majority of the applicants lived in the Greater Boston area.

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