The college was earlier known as Lincoln Technical College and built on Cathedral Street in 1932. It became
Lincoln College of Technology in the early 1970s, then administered by the City of Lincoln Education Committee. In the mid-1980s the college piloted the Technician Engineering Scholarship Scheme (TESS), funded by the Engineering Industry Training Board, a scheme for women. Two new blocks were added between 1976 and 1978, for business and management studies. North Lincolnshire College (known as NLC from 1989) was created on 1 September 1987 by Lincolnshire County Council from combining the Lincoln site with Gainsborough College of Further Education and part of the Louth Further Education Centre. It previously had its headquarters on Cathedral Street until 1993. In the early 1990s it offered degrees and HNDs in Business Studies, Electronics, and Computer Studies in conjunction with Nottingham Trent University, becoming an associate college in 1994. In 1997 the Principal, Allan Crease, in a speech to the
Association of Colleges criticised the means of funding from the
Further Education Funding Council for England (FEFC), where money was allocated by numbers at the college, and staff received less pay than those at school. In the late 1990s the
University of Lincoln was being developed, subsuming
Lincoln College of Art, and offered similar courses to the college, but the university was not fully built until the mid-2000s. In the late 1990s the college had a student population of around 15,000 and over 20,000 by 2001. It soon after changed its name to Lincoln College, not least because
North Lincolnshire was an area not covered by the college. From 2010 it was funded by the East Midlands
LSC, based in
Leicester, although the local LSC office was based nearby on Kingsley Road in
North Hykeham.
Principals • Geoffrey Church, from the early 1960s until 1981 • In around October 1988, the college principal 53-year-old Arthur Ridings, of
Southrey, became Director of Education for Lincolnshire. Fred Rickard had left in May 1985 as the county Director of Education, being replaced by Derek Esp, former deputy director for Somerset, who retired in March 1988, being briefly replaced by his deputy David Chrisp, of
Wellingore. Mr Ridings had been principal of Beeston College of Further Education from 1973, then principal of Lincoln College of Technology for five years from 1981, then headed the team that former North Lincolnshire College. He attended
Leigh Grammar School, in Lancashire where he was the county triple jump champion, and studied Maths and Physics at the
University of Nottingham, where he captained the athletics team, and played rugby for the university and the English Universities team. Mr Ridings left the county council at the end of April 1994, to help launch the new University College of Lincolnshire, with
Nottingham Trent University. The new university was planned to become independent in 2000, with around 5000 students. He moved to
Spridlington in 1994, when at the time his wife was head of the college in Louth. Arthur Ridings was replaced as county director of education in 1994 by Norman Riches, who stayed until March 2000. ==Buildings==