The state took complete control of the school in 1916, and consequently the institution was renamed Maryland State College. Also that year, the first female students enrolled at the school. On April 9, 1920, the college merged with the established professional schools in Baltimore to form the University of Maryland. The graduate school on the College Park campus awarded its first Ph.D. degrees, and the University's enrollment reached 500 students in the same year. In 1925 the University was accredited by the Association of American Universities.
By the time the first black students enrolled at the University in 1951, enrollment had grown to nearly 10,000 students—4,000 of whom were women. In 1957 President Wilson H. Elkins made a push to increase academic standards at the University. His efforts resulted in the creation of one of the first Academic Probation Plans. The first year the plan went into effect, 1,550 students (18% of the total student body) faced expulsion. Since then, academic standards at the school have steadily risen. Recognizing the improvement in academics, Phi Beta Kappa established a chapter at the university in 1964. In 1969, the university was elected to the Association of American Universities. The school continued to grow, and by the fall of 1985 reached an enrollment of 38,679.[11] Like many colleges during the Vietnam War, the university was the site of student protests and had curfews enforced by the National Guard.
In a massive 1988 restructuring of the state higher education system, the school was designated as the flagship campus of the newly formed University System of Maryland and was formally named University of Maryland, College Park. However, in 1997 the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Maryland, College Park to be known simply as the University of Maryland, recognizing the campus' role as the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland.
The other University System of Maryland institutions with the name "University of Maryland" are not satellite campuses of the University of Maryland, College Park, and are not referred to as such. The University of Maryland, Baltimore is the only other school permitted to confer certain degrees that state, simply "University of Maryland". This is because the Baltimore school offers primarily graduate degrees in disciplines not taught at College Park, such as Nursing, Dentistry, Law and Medicine. The relationship between the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore is akin to the relationship of the University of California, Berkeley to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which also primarily offers graduate programs that Berkeley does not provide.
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