text: 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. It is a member 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".
  History
  Origins (pre-1964)
  The University of Massachusetts System dates back to the founding of Massachusetts Agricultural College under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1863. Prior to the founding of UMass Boston, the Amherst campus was the only public, comprehensive university in the state. 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 162nd Massachusetts General Court expanded the UMass 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 endorsed expanding the system with a commuter campus in Boston.