History
The history of the College is directly linked to that of two institutions, the Croydon College of Art and Croydon Polytechnic.
The Borough of Croydon founded the Pitlake Technical Institute in 1888, which would later become Croydon Polytechnic, which had an initial intake of 162 students. Twenty years earlier in 1868, the School of Art had been founded above the Public Halls in George Street. In 1929 the Board of Education first highlighted the need for a new technical college to replace Croydon Polytechnic. In 1932, the School of Art was taken over by the Council to become Croydon College of Art. In 1941, the Polytechnic school was gutted by fire. It was not until 1948 before the plans for a new college could be revived when the Council drew up a Development Plan for Further Education. By then student enrolment had risen to over 4,000. The plan was to create a technical college, which would merge the Polytechnic and College of Art. Three years later, the Council formally approved plans for a new college and in 1953 building work started at the college's current Fairfield site on the first of four stages.
In June 1968, there was a six-day student protest that included Robin Scott, Malcolm McLaren, and Jamie Reid (all students at the time).
Recent Principals have included Peter Phillips (until 1994), Vic Seddon (1995–2001) and Mariane Cavalli (2001 to 2010). It was Vic Seddon who created the Croydon Higher Education Centre, developed by Mariane Cavalli, which is the focus for university degree and research activity in the town of Croydon. A proposal to create the formalised Croydon University College in the Millennium year 1999-2000 was rejected by both the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Croydon Borough Council.
Croydon College has undergone extensive refurbishment over the past few years and the summer of 2011 saw the completion of the £33m rotunda, officially opened in April 2012 by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The refurbishment included industry standard recording studios, a performance hall, a library, social and study spaces, and meeting and conference facilities.
Read more about this topic: Croydon College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)