During the mid-1950s, demand for higher education on the South Shore, and Quincy in particular, led to the creation of the Citizen's Committee appointed to study the feasibility of establishing a community college. This committee recommended that a community college should exist and as early as 1956, the first college-level courses were offered. 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, 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 when it was first given power to grant associate's degrees in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In May 1957, College Courses, Inc., a non-profit charitable organization, was officially formed to help further higher education on the South Shore. In the Fall of that same year, the first freshman class began at what will later be known as Quincy College. Less than five years later, Quincy College was empowered to award the Associate in Arts and the Associate in Science degrees. It gained accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in 1980. Quincy College is one of the last municipally owned colleges in the USA. In 1991, the school founded the Plymouth campus located thirty minutes south of Quincy in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Nursing program shut down and resignation of President Peter Tsaffaras
On May 9, 2018, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing withdrew its approval of Quincy colleges’ nursing program. More than 250 students will need to finish their degrees at other institutions in the state. On May 15, Quincy College President Peter Tsaffaras offered his resignation and said he had lost the confidence of the Board of Governors. The percentage of Quincy college graduates who passed licensure exams on their first try in 2017 was just 54%, this was down from 59% in 2016, and 72% in 2015. On March 13, 2019, the Board of Registration in Nursing voted to allow reopening of a refreshed and updated nursing program on the Quincy and Plymouth Campuses.
Presidents
Campus
The main campus is in Quincy Center located at 1250 Hancock St, President's Place. Saville Hall which is also part of Quincy College is located 24 Saville Ave. There is also another satellite campus in Plymouth, MA. The school does not have residential facilities, as it is a commuter school.
Organization
Quincy College operates under the auspices of the City of Quincy. The college is unusual in this respect, as it is the only one of Massachusetts' 16 community colleges to be run by a city, rather than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is one of only two colleges in the United States organized this way. Until the 1990s, it was run by the Quincy School Committee, but now has its own governing board.
Academics
The college confers 37 Associate degrees and 25 certificates of completion in a wide variety of studies. Quincy College operates an articulation agreement with Cambridge College for four-year baccalaureate degrees and with Excelsior College for online learning. It is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The school is an open enrollment institution, meaning that it accepts all students with a high school diploma or equivalent to matriculate, regardless of academic abilities, without selectivity. As of 2010, there were 4,505 students enrolled.
