ABOUT US

The college was established in 1965 as the New England Aeronautical Institute and was associated with Boire Field, now Nashua Airport. In 1978, it merged with its Daniel Webster Junior College division to become Daniel Webster College.

By the mid-2000s, the college was having financial problems and failing to meet "financial responsibility standards" of the United States Department of Education, a measure of economic viability. In 2009, Daniel Webster College received a score of just 0.5 out of 3 on that scale, with 1.5 considered passing. Faced with the prospect of losing educational accreditation and federal funding, both of which would have forced the school to close, it was acquired by ITT Educational Services, Inc., the parent company of the ITT Technical Institutes, in June 2009 for $29.3 million. The new owner converted the college to a for-profit institution.

In 2010, ITT Educational Services phased out the flight program and stopped accepting new flight students, while allowing students currently enrolled in the program to complete their education. The last of these graduated in 2013. Following the suspension of the flight program, student enrollment declined from 900 to approximately 650 undergraduate students.

In August 2016, the U.S. Department of Education prohibited ITT Educational Services from enrolling new students who used federal financial aid, because accreditor ACICS threatened to revoke accreditation for the 130 other schools that it ran. The school suspended new enrollment, then on September 6, ceased operations. The 2016-17 academic year at Daniel Webster was not threatened because it used a different accreditor, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). However, the NEASC said the Department of Education's "extraordinary demands" implied that the college did not meet its standards either, and required the college to show why its NEASC accreditation should not be withdrawn as well. Daniel Webster agreed to submit such a report, but by September 9, the federal government refused to release financial aid for Daniel Webster students. Daniel Webster College, Inc. and the parent corporation filed for bankruptcy on September 16.

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), a non-profit college in Manchester, New Hampshire, hired 87 of DWC's faculty and staff to let the 2016-17 academic year proceed in Nashua. Seniors could graduate from Daniel Webster, while underclassmen had the option of continuing their subsequent years at SNHU. SNHU also tried to buy the Nashua campus, but its bids were rejected and SNHU instead opted to build a new engineering building of its own by 2019. Ultimately, SNHU purchased DWC's flight center, tower building, and hangar at Nashua Airport, while an unidentified university from China acquired the remainder of the campus.