Boston Teachers' College

University of Massachusetts Boston

Type	Public
Established	1852 Boston State College 1964 UMass Boston
Parent institution	UMass System
Academic affiliations	APLU AAC&U AASCU Urban 13/GCU
Endowment	$78.9 million (2015)
Chancellor	Barry Mills (interim)
President	Marty Meehan
Provost	Emily McDermott (interim)
Academic staff	1,243 (2016)
Students	16,847 (2016)
Undergraduates	12,847 (2016)
Postgraduates	4,000 (2016)
Location	Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts 42°18′48″N 71°02′18″W / 42.313432°N 71.038445°W / 42.313432; -71.038445Coordinates: 42°18′48″N 71°02′18″W / 42.313432°N 71.038445°W / 42.313432; -71.038445
Campus	Urban, 120 acres (0.49 km2)
Colors	Blue and White
Nickname	Beacons
Sporting affiliations	NCAA Division III – Little East, NEHC
Mascot	Bobby Beacon
Website	www.umb.edu

The University of Massachusetts Boston, also known as UMass Boston, is an urban public research university and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massachusetts system.

The university is on 120 acres (0.49 km²) on the Columbia Point peninsula in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. UMass Boston is the only public university in Boston. Students are primarily from Massachusetts but some are from other parts of the U.S. or different countries.

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.