Mount Ida College is a private college in Newton, Massachusetts offering professional undergraduate and graduate degrees. The Mount Ida School for Girls was a private all-female high school founded in 1899 by George Franklin Jewett, named after the hill on which it was located in Newton Corner, Massachusetts. The first junior college level courses were offered at Mount Ida in 1907, but the first associate degrees were not awarded until 1967. After encountering severe financial difficulties, it was forced to close during the Great Depression, but was purchased by William Fitts Carlson in 1939 and relocated to its present location in Oak Hill section of Newton. The school was later renamed as Mount Ida Junior College, and became a co-educational institution in the late 1970s. Several Boston-based institutions also merged with Mount Ida on the Newton campus, including Grahm Junior College (1979), Bryant & Stratton Business Institute (1979), Chamberlayne Junior College (1988), New England Institute of Funeral Service Education (1989), and Coyne Electrical and Technical School.