Durgapur Women’s College had been established as the first women’s Degree College with the express aim of educating girl students living in the vicinity of the Steel City of Durgapur. The establishment of the College was the outcome of a project taken up by the DNAA (now Durgapur Municipal Corporation).
The foundation stone of the College was laid on 5th April, 1981 by the then Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal, Sri Jyoti Basu. However, the College had already started functioning from the academic session of 1980, holding classes in the evening at David Hare Primary School, B-Zone, Durgapur. Durgapur Women’s College started functioning from its own premises on Mahatma Gandhi Road from 1982. From the very beginning the Mission and Objective of Durgapur Women’s College has been “Empowering Women”. In its thirty-six years of existence, the College has been continuously expanding its academic horizons. At the time of its inception, the College was affiliated to the University of Burdwan for imparting instruction in BA Pass course only. From the academic session of 1984-85, the College began imparting instruction in B.Sc Pass course as well. Honours courses in various subjects were introduced from the session of 1986-87. At present the College offers BA Honours courses in five subjects—Bengali, English, History, Political Science and Sanskrit and B.Sc Honours courses in four subjects—Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics. It offers General courses (under the annual system) and Generic Elective and Programme courses (under the semester system) in Economics, Philosophy, Hindi, Electronics and also all the subjects which run Honours courses, except Computer Science.