General description

Founded in 1927, Long Beach City College was initially housed at Wilson Classical High School in southeast Long Beach. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake resulted in classes being held at Recreation Park until 1935, when the college moved into its Liberal Arts Campus in Lakewood Village at Carson Street and Clark Avenue.

During and after World War II, the college increased so rapidly that a new campus had to be established. This was realized in 1949 with the establishment of the Pacific Coast Campus, occupied on the former site of Hamilton Junior High School. As Long Beach City College grew in the 1970s, state law separated the college from the Long Beach Unified School District. In that decade and the 1980s, Proposition 13 signaled retrenchment for the college, with many popular classes and services folding.

Also during the 1980s, the arrival of refugees from Southeast Asia resulted in the need for extensive courses in the ESL program. This program became the largest at the college due to a later wave of amnesty applicants.

1987 saw the college acquire neighboring Veterans Memorial Stadium from the City of Long Beach. Even before it acquired the stadium, as far back as the early 1970s, the college was allowed to use its facilities as a practice field and to provide several hundred much-needed parking for students of the college. In recent years, the college has upgraded the stadium playing surface, its swimming pool facility, as well as established wireless internet and e-mail services in 2005.

Bond Measure E has seen the construction of a Child Development Center at the PCC, and construction for new buildings on both campuses are underway, including a new South Quad Complex Building on the formers LAC golf mall, a new Industrial Technology Building at the PCC, and a new East Campus for the Culinary Arts Program.

Why choose Long Beach Community College District

Long Beach City College (LBCC) is a public community college in Long Beach, California. It was established in 1927 and is divided into two campuses. The Liberal Arts Campus is in Lakewood Village and the Pacific Coast Campus is in central Long Beach on Pacific Coast Highway. It is the only college in the Long Beach Community College District.

LBCC serves San Pedro, Catalina Island and the cities of Long Beach, Lakewood and Signal Hill. During the 2015-2016 academic year, the college had an enrollment of 33,818 students.