Merritt College

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This article is about the community college in Oakland. For the private nursing school also located in Oakland, see Samuel Merritt College.

Merritt College

Established:	1954
Type:	Community college
President:	Evelyn C. Wesley
Students:	6,000
Location:	Oakland, California, United States
Campus:	Suburban: 125 acres (0.5 km²)
Colors:	Royal Blue, Gold and White
Nickname:	Thunderbirds
Affiliations:	California Community Colleges and Peralta Community College District
Website:	http://merritt.peralta.edu

Merritt College is a two-year community college located in the hills of Oakland in Alameda County, California. Current enrollment is 6,000 students.

The college is part of the Peralta Community College District and was opened as a general campus in 1954 (it had been known as the Merritt School of Business, and along with what is now Laney College, operated by the Oakland Unified School District as Oakland Junior College, which became the nucleus of the Peralta Colleges). In 1966, two Merritt College students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party.

The college originally opened in the former Grove Street campus of University High School (1923–1943), located at what is now 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. This site, now rehabilitated and serving as the north campus of the Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

The present campus was opened in 1971, the result of a 1965 bond issue which also established a new downtown Oakland campus building for Laney College and the founding of the College of Alameda.

Merritt College's occupational programs include nursing and health professions, community social services/substance abuse counseling, environmental hazardous materials technology, computer information systems, landscape horticulture and environmental management, paralegal studies, and restoration technology.