19th century Antioch College was incorporated in
Ohio in 1852 and accredited by the
Higher Learning Commission in 1927. In the early 1850s,
Rebecca Pennell offered a course on teaching methods which was the first of its kind, and John Burns Weston, class of 1857, established a long-standing precedent by being both student and faculty simultaneously. He taught Greek language and literature for 20 years and remained a lifelong student. Antioch College president
Arthur Morgan launched Antioch's unique program of work and study, including
student government and changing the nature of the admissions procedure, which he moved away from exams and towards more personal information on prospective students. Senior exams were graded "honors" or "pass", and students who failed could retake the exam. Morgan remained at Antioch College until 1933, when he became director of the
Tennessee Valley Authority. Antioch College's first president was
Horace Mann, regarded by most historians as the father of public
education in the United States.
20th century Antioch College began a period of rapid expansion in 1964 with the acquisition of
the Putney School of Education in Vermont. The campus evolved and moved several times; now it is called Antioch University New England and is located in
Keene, New Hampshire. By 1972, another 23 campuses and centers had been opened, and the college bylaws were revised to define Antioch as a network, not a college. Even as centers began to close, new centers continued to open; 38 centers would be opened by the end of 1979, including Antioch University School of Law in
Washington, D.C. In 1977, the Antioch College board of trustees voted to change its corporate name to Antioch University, having extended its operations beyond the college and beyond Ohio, mostly in graduate level programs. It continued to operate Antioch College as a division of the university along with the other campuses and centers. From 1978 to 1994, the president of the Antioch College campus also served as the chancellor of Antioch University.
21st century In 2007, the Antioch University board of trustees announced that they would suspend operations of Antioch College the following year and that they intended to re-open the college in four years. In the transaction, Antioch College Continuation Corporation purchased from the university the college campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio, along with an exclusive license to use the university's registered trade name "Antioch College". However, Antioch University continues to own the trade name and any other use of the word "Antioch" within higher education. In 2008, due to financial exigency, Antioch University closed the Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs. In 2009, a number of Antioch College alumni formed a new Ohio corporation, Antioch College Continuation Corporation, which purchased from the university the college campus along with an exclusive license to use the university's registered trade name "Antioch College". The new independent Antioch College opened in 2011. Since then, Antioch University and Antioch College have operated as wholly separate, non-affiliated institutions. In 2010, the college was
sanctioned by the
American Association of University Professors "for infringement of governance standards". From its inception, racial and gender equality, independent study, and independent thinking were integral parts of Antioch College. Six students were accepted for the first quarter: four men and two women who came to share the same college classrooms for the first time in the U.S. The notion of
gender equality extended also to the faculty. Antioch College was the first U.S. college to designate a woman as full professor, and the original faculty included seven men and two women. In 1863, the college instituted the policy that no applicant was to be rejected on the basis of race. ==Campuses==