The first day classes were added in 1937. A junior college program followed shortly after. The 1970s brought a wave of consolidations: UBalt merged with Eastern College, the Mount Vernon School of Law, and Baltimore College of Commerce. Thomas Granville Pullen's presidency in the early 1970s brought regional accreditation from the Middle States Association in 1971 and the Langsdale Library building in 1966. Ownership was assumed by the State of Maryland in 1975. The university was incorporated into the new statewide University of Maryland System (later renamed the University System of Maryland) in 1988. From 1975 to 2007, the university operated as an upper-division-only institution, accepting students who already had two years of college coursework. The lower-division initiative, approved by the Maryland Higher Education Commission on February 15, 2006, restored the institution to a full four-year program starting in fall 2007. Freshmen got their first year of tuition paid by an anonymous private donor.

The main campus sits at the intersection of Mount Royal Avenue and North Charles Street, surrounded by some of Baltimore's most distinctive cultural buildings. The Lyric Opera House is two blocks east; the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, is a block south. The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) sits diagonally across the intersection. Penn Station, the city's Amtrak and MARC commuter terminal, is just to the north. The university's John and Frances Angelos Law Center, designed by the German firm Behnisch Architekten and completed in 2013, is one of the more architecturally distinctive new academic buildings in Baltimore - a transparent twelve-story tower of stacked classrooms and library space facing Mount Royal Avenue. The Robert L. Bogomolny Library, also designed by Behnisch Architekten, completed renovation in 2022. Gordon Plaza is at the center of campus. The setting puts UBalt students within walking distance of more cultural institutions than perhaps any other American university campus.

The University of Baltimore School of Law is one of only two law schools in Maryland - the other is the University of Maryland's Francis King Carey School of Law in West Baltimore. UBalt Law's evening program, designed for working students, has been one of the defining features of the institution since the school absorbed the Mount Vernon School of Law in the 1970s. The school offers Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degrees and shares the John and Frances Angelos Law Center with practicing attorneys and continuing legal education programs. The Maryland State Bar Association maintains its offices in the law center. The combination - working law students, practicing lawyers, and bar association staff in the same building - is unusual and deliberate. UBalt Law has produced multiple chief judges of Maryland's appellate courts, dozens of state legislators, and a steady stream of practicing attorneys who shaped Baltimore's legal culture for generations.

Admission to UBalt is genuinely open. In 2024, the university accepted 85.5 percent of undergraduate applicants. The average enrolled student had a 2.89 high school GPA. Standardized test scores are not required but are considered if submitted. The admissions philosophy is the modern equivalent of the 1925 mission: provide access to higher education for people who need it, including those whose traditional academic credentials don't fully capture what they're capable of. The student body skews older than at most American universities. Many students work full-time and take classes in the evening or online. The Master of Public Administration program, which the university says was the first in Maryland to be fully accredited by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, draws state and local government employees pursuing the credentials that will move them into senior roles. The MBA, the criminal justice programs, the social work degree - these are practical programs serving working professionals.

The university's slogan, adopted in the mid-2000s, is Knowledge That Works - a phrase that captures both the institution's century-long focus and its frequent tension with peer institutions over funding. UBalt has historically been a traditionally white institution while Morgan State, the historically Black public university three miles north, has fought for state funding. The 2021 legal settlement between Maryland and the four historically Black institutions in the state - including a $577 million payment - was meant to address decades of underfunding directed instead to institutions like UBalt. UBalt's MBA program has been a particular target of criticism for what some perceive as a duplication of programs available at Morgan State, where the MBA program receives less state support. The institution navigates this tension as it does its other challenges - by emphasizing its specific service to working adult students of any background and its location in a downtown campus that prides itself on being practical, accessible, and Baltimore through and through. A century after the first night class on St. Paul Street, the underlying argument has not really changed.