Jagannath College founded as Dhaka Brahma School in 1858 by Dinanath Sen, Prabhaticharan Roy, Anathbandhu Mallik and Brajasundar Kaitra. Kishorilal Chowdhury, the zamindar of Baliadi, took over the school in 1872 and renamed it as Jagannath School after his father. In 1884, it was raised to a second grade college. Law was one of the first courses introduced in the college. A common management committee administered the school and college until 1887, when the school section was separated to form an independent school named Kishore Jubilee School. It is now known as K L Jubilee School. The administration of the college was transferred to a board of trustees in 1907. In the following year, it became a first grade college.

The college started with only 48 students and in five years, the roll raised to 396. In 1910, Raja Manmath Roy Chowdhury, the zamindar of Santosh, tangail affiliated the Pramath-Manmath College of Tangail with Jagannath College. By this time Jagannath College became known as the best-equipped private college in dhaka. It goes to the credit of Jagannath College along with dhaka college that the university of dhaka started in 1921 mainly with students graduated from these two colleges. But with the establishment of Dhaka University, the college had to stop admission in Degree courses and was renamed Jagannath Intermediate College. This status was changed after 28 years in 1949, when it reopened Degree classes. The college was taken over by the government in 1968, but neither the students nor the teachers were happy with its new status of a government college. The college regained its old private and autonomous status within a year.

Jagannath College opened honours and masters programmes in 1975. That year the government once again took over the college and upgraded it into a postgraduate college. In 1982, the college closed its programmes of intermediate level. Because of a rapid growth of the number of students seeking admission in its degree programmes the college introduced evening shifts in 1992. In 1999, the college had honours courses in 18 subjects and masters courses in 20 subjects. It had about 35,000 students, of whom about 17% were female. The number of teachers in the college was 350, of whom 180 were for the day shift and 170 for the evening shift. Around 75% of the teachers were female.

The teachers and students of the college took active part in the language movement of the early 1950s, the mass movements of the 1960s and the war of liberation of the country in 1971. The college produced tens of thousands graduates. Many of them have become famous at home and abroad. Noted among the alumni of the college are sufi motahar hosen (poet), Abdul Hamid (sports organiser and sports journalist), Bhabatosh Dutta (economist), Premendra Mitra (writer and poet), AR Yusuf (Bar-at-Law, State Minister of Bangladesh in early 1980s), A KMA Rouf (artist), Anisuzzaman (educationist, researcher), and Brozen Das (swimmer, the first Indian to swim across English Channel). [S M Mahfuzur Rahman]