College History

The College has an illustrious history and pedigree which it shares with two other sister institutions: Vidyasagar College and Vidyasagar College for Women.

When Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar became the President of the Managing Committee of the Calcutta Training School in 1859, it paved the way for the Metropolitan Institution established in 1860. The growth of the Institution led to its affiliation to the University of Calcutta for teaching Arts subjects on 1st January, 1872. In 1917 it was renamed Vidyasagar College. Since then, the College has witnessed rapid growth. Subsequently its academic curriculum expanded with the formal beginning of the Commerce Department in 1922 and the Morning Section for Women in 1931. The Commerce Department of the College has the distinction of being the oldest commerce teaching Department in India. In 1928 it acquired the affiliation for teaching the B.Com. Course (under the University of Calcutta). In 1951 a separate wing of the College was established, devoted to teaching Commerce in the evening shift, owing to the rapid growth of the Department in terms of faculty and student strength. The evening section emerged as an independent entity with a separate Governing Body in 1961 bearing the name Vidyasagar Evening College and since then the College is being run with the mission of disseminating knowledge to the cross section of students forced to work during the day to support themselves and their families. In the course of its expansion the institution has had as its alumni Swami Vivekananda, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, Acharya Jadunath Sarkar, Ram Monohar Lohia, Babu Jagjiban Ram and many others who made immense contribution in various walks of life. The institution has also had the fortune of receiving the services of such great luminaries as Rashtraguru Surendranath Banerjee, Desbandhu Cittaranjan Das, Professor Sisir Kumar Bhaduri, Nabin Chandra Vidyaratna and even Rabindranath Tagore in various capacities.

True to the philanthropic spirit of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the founder of the College, the teaching and the non-teaching staff have been tireless in exploring new avenues of growth and making the functioning of the College more responsive to the needs of students. Owing to limitations of space caused by the main campus being utilized by the three sister colleges on a time sharing basis, there have been constraints on the expansion of Vidyasagar Metropolitan College’s academic activities. However, with the recent construction of separate buildings for Vidyasagar Metropolitan College and Vidyasagar College for Women (by the acquisition of a plot of land adjacent to the main building of the College), the Institution is favourably poised for the fulfilment of its plans of expanding academic curriculum.

Owing to recent alteration of college working hours, the College authorities proposed to change the name of the College from Vidyasagar Evening College to Vidyasagar Metropolitan College. The proposal has been approved by the Syndicate of the University of Calcutta and approval has been sought and received from the UGC in this regard. Presently, besides offering Honours and General courses in Commerce, the College offers Undergraduate courses in Humanities and Science subjects, with Honours in Bengali, English, Political Science, Geography, Mathematics, Physics and Physiology. The College has also become a study centre for Post Graduate courses in Geography as well as Dietetics and Community Nutrition Management (DCNM) under the Directorate of Distance Education, Vidyasagar University from academic session 2014-15.