Quincy College - History

History

The school's first classes were offered at the Coddington Elementary School in 1956 as College Courses, Inc., after a committee was created to establish a new community college and Timothy L. Smith, historian and professor at the Eastern Nazarene College (ENC), was named its first director. It was sponsored by the Quincy School Department and used faculty from Eastern Nazarene. Another ENC history professor, Charles W. Akers, became its first full-time director and transformed it into a junior college in 1958, naming it Quincy Junior College (QJC) when it was first given power to grant associate's degrees in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

For many years, the Quincy community and the Patriot Ledger were disapproving of the new junior college. Since 1959, and especially after the creation of other state-controlled community colleges beginning in 1960, the school board had petitioned the Massachusetts Board of Education several times about becoming "South Shore Community College", but the school was passed over each time and finally gave up with the creation of Brockton's Massasoit Community College (MCC) in 1978.

It eventually gained accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) in 1980. Then in 1981, the city took to discussing spinning off the junior college and the city hospital as private entities, but officials were afraid that such a move would force the school to close for lack of funds. In the 1980s, the school had begun to suffer from declining enrollment, so the idea of merging with Massasoit Community College arose in 1985, talks of joining the state system independent from the Brockton school emerged again in 1986, and it was suggested that the Quincy school, Massasoit, and the Blue Hills Technical Institute all become campuses of a new South Shore Community College, but the talks and their various options died out by 1988. Quincy Junior instead dropped "Junior" from its name in 1990 and established a satellite campus in Plymouth 1991.

In 1992, not only did NEASC threaten to revoke accreditation, but then-president O. Clayton Johnson filed a lawsuit against the Quincy School Committee for racial discrimination and was fired the next year for insubordination. Under ENC professor and interim president Donald Young in 1994, the school established its own governing board at the suggestion of NEASC, thereby keeping its accreditation from NEASC. That same year, however, the new board named professor Linda B. Wilson as the next interim president over the city council's objections, and she resigned the next year over conflicts with the board.

Then from 2003 to 2005, the college was struck by a series of controversial scandals in which then-President Sean Barry and administration officials were accused of financial mismanagement and use of scholarship funds for entertainment and travel expenses, leading to Barry's firing and an FBI investigation. Due to fabrication of documents suggesting that surgical technology students were receiving operating room experience they did not actually have, the program was suspended for two years, regaining its accreditation in 2007.

The college has also had a tumultuous relationship with the city recently over rent for its downtown buildings, including an attempted eviction in 2003. Coddington Hall, the school's former main building, is owned by the City of Quincy and was taken over in 2007 as temporary classroom space for Quincy High School during the construction of a new high school. This necessitated vacating the building and moving many of the school's programs to a location in North Quincy.

Quincy College, one of the last municipally owned colleges in the USA, has sought for independence from the city of Quincy and hopes to be fully independent by 2011.