Bay Path University

Bay Path University is a private university located in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Bay Path offers both all-women Bachelor's degree programs (both on-campus and online), and co-educational master's degree programs (both on-campus and online). The University also has a One Day A Week College for adult women and the American Women's College, the first all-women online college.

Founded in 1897 as the Bay Path Institute, the college has gone through several name changes and upgrades to its accreditation status. From 1988 to 2014 it was known as Bay Path College. Bay Path University is a member of the Cooperating Colleges of Greater Springfield, an eight-college consortium.

History

Bay Path was founded in 1897 as Bay Path Institute in Springfield, Massachusetts. Bay Path started as an urban, coeducational institute offering business teacher training, secretarial science, business administration and accounting degrees. The name Bay Path was derived from its location on the old Bay Path (a part of Boston Post Road), which united the western part of the state with what was once the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first class in 1897 was 30 students, but Bay Path grew rapidly in its first few decades. In 1920, Bay Path bought the Clawson-Hamilton Business School of Brattleboro, Vermont, and renamed it the Brattleboro Business Institute. In the same year the competitor Griffin Business School was also purchased and integrated into Bay Path. Bay Path was one of the largest and most successful business schools in the highly competitive Northeast during this time, with a peak enrollment of 1,200 students taking classes in innovative, accelerated format. The institution struggled heavily, however, during the Great Depression and World War II, and by 1944 the institute was nearly bankrupt.