History
In 1887, Robert Fulton Cutting, treasurer of the ECUSA, donated $5000 to an Episcopalian bishop in Liberia for the establishment of a school for teaching Liberian children — both Americo-Liberian and native — about industry and agriculture. The university was finally established in 1889 by Samuel David Ferguson in Cape Palmas where it remained until 1929. Named Cuttington College when it opened, M. P. Keda Valentine served as the first principal followed by Samuel Taylor. Among the first private colleges in the West African region, the school was seen as a college for Liberia's elite. Some of the earliest graduates included "two chief justices of the Liberian Supreme Court and three associate justices, one minister of education and many civil servants".
In 1948, the college moved to Suacoco in Bong County, 120 miles north of Liberia's capital of Monrovia. Prior to the First Liberian Civil War, 45% of government officials were alumni of the college. In the wake of the 1980 military coup, the college continued to be favoured with government assistance, as the Ministry of Action for Development and Progress provided approximately $1.5 million for the college's 1981-1982 budget. During the First Liberian Civil War from 1989 to 1996 the school was looted and the structures were damaged and the campus used as a training facility for militias. From 1990 to 1997 the school operated only at an office in the U.S. state of Virginia. In 1998, the now Cuttington University College re-opened with a class of 103 students.
The college has now reopened for the third time in its history (the second founding was at its current location was in 1948), after a lengthy period of civil conflict. On August 15, 2004, 117 students graduated on the war-ravaged campus in various disciplines, with the highest number of graduates being in nursing.
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