Patriot Ledger // Published January 18, 2017 // By Sean Cotter

QUINCY – Quincy College will begin issuing four-year degrees in coming years in an effort to keep up with the increasingly higher levels of academic achievement employers look for.

Gov. Charlie Baker signed the legislation, which allows the college to award bachelor’s degrees, into law on Friday after the Massachusetts Legislature passed it the previous week.

People won’t be able to sign up for these programs for the upcoming fall semester, but within the following year or two these programs should become available, said Taggart Boyle, the community college’s director of communications.

The college needs to work out the classes it will need to provide, and what the syllabi for them will be. It will need to find staff to teach those classes, and get the programs approved by the state, Boyle said.

He said the college began seeking this change over the past coupe of years after there appeared to be changes to the one of their students’ most fundamental questions: “What’s the educational criteria for me to get a job?”

Boyle said that it’s still to be determined which of the college’s associate or certificate programs may have a four-year track. He said that nursing is an example of a program that the school will take a long look at, as it’s a popular field among the college’s students and more and more hospitals are looking for applicants with bachelor’s degrees.

“The entry-level credential is moving upwards,” he said.

Quincy College has a campus in Quincy Center and another in Plymouth; it enrolls about 5,000 students between the two.

Boyle said that internal surveys showed that 94 percent of the college’s students would like to work toward a bachelor’s degree at the college. He said that many of the people who enroll in Quincy College are “place bound,” with families, kids and limited transportation.

“There’s some barriers to coming back to school” for many adults looking for better jobs, he said.

– Sean Philip Cotter may be reached by email at scotter@ledger.com, by phone at 617-786-7049. Like the Ledger page on Facebook to follow more South Shore news.

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