In the 1960s, a critical shortage of doctors developed in the United States, due to the limited number of medical schools that existed to train them. In response to this shortage, the Toledo State College of Medicine — later renamed Medical College of Ohio and, after that, Medical University of Ohio — was founded in 1964 as a freestanding, state-supported institution that eventually blossomed into an academic health sciences center.
One of fourteen state universities in Ohio, The University of Toledo was established in 1872 and became a member of the state university system in 1967. UT and the Medical University of Ohio merged July 2006 to form an institution with a breadth of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs matched by fewer than twenty universities across the nation and with the third-largest public university operating budget in the state.