This isn’t really central to the whole discussion, but a very mild objection: Yes, Massachusetts made a conscious decision to place their flagship campus well away from the main population center of the state. This isn’t always the case, though, even if present-day eyes might see it that way—Alaska isn’t alone, for example, in having placed its flagship campus in what was at the time the population center (in that case, Fairbanks), only to have demographic history make that choice look silly in retrospect.