Union County College
MacDonald Hall
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| Type | Public community college |
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| Established | 1933 |
| President | Jansen Arrowood |
| Students | 11,100 (Spring 2011) |
| Location | Cranford, Elizabeth, Plainfield and Scotch Plains, New Jersey, USA |
| Campus | Suburban and Urban |
| Affiliations | Middle States |
| Website | www |
Union County College (UCC) is an accredited, co-educational, two-year, public, community college located in Union County, New Jersey. As the first and oldest of New Jersey's 19 community colleges, Union County College has been serving both career-minded and transfer-oriented students since 1933. The College has four campuses situated in Cranford, Elizabeth, Plainfield and Scotch Plains. The College is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The college offers more than 80 programs with degrees in Associate in Arts, Associate in Science, and Associate in Applied Science degree programs, and certificate programs provided by the Continuing Education program. It also offers distance education classes using the online Learning management system called Canvas from Instructure which allows students to gain credits toward degrees at their own convenience.
Union County Junior College opened on October 16, 1933 in Roselle, New Jersey, with 243 evening students. With massive numbers of people out of work, there was strong pressure to educate people as a way to provide jobs; one account suggests that the official who "established Union County Junior College" was the Union county schools superintendent, Arthur L. Johnson, who was seeking ways for people to find employment and better themselves. According to one source, it was the oldest community college in New Jersey. Still, the college was "pitifully underfinanced" and rented space from a local high school. Its initial budget was $17,000 for the entire school. Its purpose at the time wasn't so much to teach undergraduates but to "provide jobs for unemployed teachers" during the Great Depression, according to historian Donald R. Raichle. An early administrator was Dean Hubert Banks Huntley. Raichle described the college's emerging mission was preparing "students in the first two years of college to make possible their later transfer to other colleges and universities. But funding problems became even more severe, and a lack of funds from the federal government in the middle 1930s forced a change back from public to independent status.Vocational training was emphasized; the curriculum catered to students who did not plan to further their education at four-year universities. The college was to have four distinct homes from its founding until 1983.
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