In the early 1920s, young people in Maasin who finished their intermediate grades had nowhere nearby to continue to secondary school. The only option was the national high school in Tacloban City.
Rev. Angel C. Espina knew this hardship from his own search for knowledge. He had been fortunate to study at Silliman Institute, now Silliman University. Inspired by that experience and by his dedication to quality Christian education, he founded the Maasin Institute on August 25, 1924.
The school became a training ground for men and women who brought a Christian dimension of leadership to many fields. After the Second World War it began offering collegiate programs in Teacher Education and Liberal Arts, and in 1963 the Maasin Institute was renamed The College of Maasin (CM).
The rapid social change of the 1970s brought a serious struggle for survival. In 1971, with the founder advancing in age, the Espina family donated the college to the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) to ensure that its mission in education would continue. The 1974 UCCP General Assembly in Cebu City accepted the donation, and CM joined the network of UCCP church-related schools.
The collegiate programs nearly closed in the mid-1970s. Through the faith and commitment of church and academic leaders, the college survived economic recession, political conflict and a legal battle over its ownership between 1984 and 1992.
In 1993, CREATE-UCCP, the network of UCCP-related schools and colleges, together with the UCCP national leadership, reorganized the Board of Trustees, elected new leadership and formulated a ten-year Comprehensive Development Program (COMDEP). The following year, with support from CREATE-UCCP and the Central Agency of the Evangelical Church of West Germany (EZE), construction began on the main college building housing the administration, collegiate classrooms, science and business laboratories, and the library.
From 1995 onward the college continued its journey of academic rehabilitation, recovery and the pursuit of quality education, growing into the institution it is today, with programs from pre-elementary to law and graduate studies. In 2024, The College of Maasin marked one hundred years since its founding.