The institution is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS).

[3][4] Joseph Jessing emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1867, was ordained to the priesthood in 1870, and assigned to Sacred Heart Church in Pomeroy.

[5] Within his first year at Sacred Heart, the parish purchased a house next door to serve as an orphanage for twelve local boys, supported in part by a German-language newspaper that Jessing wrote.

[6] The facility, located at the intersection of Main and Seventeenth Streets in Columbus gave both a Catholic education and training in the trades to the young men in its care.

[7] In October 1888, prompted both by the desire of some of the orphan boys to study for the priesthood and the need for German-speaking priests, Jessing founded the Collegium Josephinum.

[7] Like the much older Collegio Urbano, the Pontifical Collegium Josephinum was initially connected to Rome by the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith, as is evidenced in it charter from Leo XIII below.

From the granting of pontifical status to the present, the institution has been under the direction of the Dicastery for Catholic Education, with the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States as its chancellor.

[2] Led by a decades long effort by its most significant graduate and 20th century leader, Leonard J. Fick, the Josephinum was accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), then an affiliate of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, in 1976.