Massey Agricultural College

The institution which formed the main bulk of the new Massey University College of Manawatu (established in 1963), which became Massey University in 1964, was the old Massey Agricultural College. The process to establish the Agricultural College had its origins in the late nineteenth century.

The call for tertiary education in agricultural sciences in the North Island first went up in 1879. It took years of political wrangling before the New Zealand College of Agriculture was eventually founded by the passing of the New Zealand Agricultural College Act on 11 September 1926. On 29 July 1927 and amending Act, the Massey Agricultural College Act, was passed. This Act renamed the College in honour of the former New Zealand Prime Minister, William Ferguson Massey.

The new Massey Agricultural College was a fully constituent college of the University of New Zealand and was officially opened on 20 March 1928 in Palmerston North. The initial student roll was 85 and the staff count was 20, which included academic and support staff.

During its first three decades the College lived through the tumult of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Between 1937 and 1951 there was a period of semi-amalgamation with Lincoln Agricultural College in what was known as the New Zealand School of Agriculture.  By the late 1950s major change was in the air for the New Zealand university sector.

In 1961 the University of New Zealand was dissolved and most of its constituent colleges became autonomous universities. Under the terms of the Massey College Act of 1961, Massey Agricultural College was renamed Massey College and elected to associate itself with Victoria University of Wellington, pending the assumption of full autonomy. This duly followed in 1964 after the amalgamation with the Palmerston North University College in 1963.

The first of the Massey’s faculties to open its doors to students was the Faculty of Agriculture in 1927. Science courses were offered from 1958, laying the foundation of the Faculty of Science which was formally established in 1963. In 1961 a Faculty of Food Technology was established and this was followed by a Faculty of Veterinary Science in 1962.