Mount Ida College is a private college in Newton, Massachusetts offering professional undergraduate and graduate degrees.HistoryThe Mount Ida School for Girls, once a high school, became a finishing school and was founded in 1899 by George Franklin Jewett, named after the hill on which it was located in Newton Corner, Massachusetts. The first junior college level courses were offered at Mount Ida in the mid 1900s, and the school was officially rebranded as a Junior College in 1961. It was granted the ability to award associate degrees and the first were awarded in 1967. After encountering severe financial difficulties, it was forced to close during the Great Depression, but was purchased by William Fitts Carlson in 1939 and relocated to its present location in Oak Hill section of Newton.The school was later renamed as Mount Ida Junior College, and became a co-educational institution in 1976, a logical step since so many Vietnam veterans were attending in the 1970s thanks to the GI Bill. Several Boston-based institutions also merged with Mount Ida on the Newton campus, Chamberlayne Junior College (1988), New England Institute of Funeral Service Education (1989), and Coyne Electrical and Technical School. The Senior College division awarding bachelor's degrees began in stages. In 1982 Massachusetts allowed Mount Ida to grant three Bachelor degrees as Mount Ida filed to drop the Junior part of the college name The Senior Degree program was fully accredited in 1984, with an emphasis on career and professional education. In 2012 Barry Brown was appointed president of the college.
