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, it received a score of 0.5 out of 3 on that scale, with 1.5 considered passing. Faced with the loss of
educational accreditation and federal funding, which would have forced it to close, it was acquired by ITT Educational Services, Inc., the parent company of the
ITT Technical Institutes, in June 2009 for US$29.3 million. The new owner converted the college to a
for-profit institution. 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, undergraduate enrollment declined from 900 to approximately 650. 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college did not meet its standards either, and required the college to show why its NEASC accreditation should not be withdrawn as well.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,
Academics The school offered 17 campus-based B.S. degree programs, and 9 online degree programs including the M.B.A. The school was
accredited by the
New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Daniel Webster's aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering programs were accredited by the
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.
Athletics Initially, a limited athletics program competed in NEIA basketball. Later, Daniel Webster enjoyed some success in baseball and men's soccer; the soccer program won the Greater Boston Small College Conference championship in 1980 and 1981. The college joined the
NCAA as an independent in 1993. It became a charter member of both the
Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) in 1996 and the
New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) in 2007. That year, Daniel Webster was declared the NECC's top overall athletics program, finishing first among all men's programs and second among women's programs. The program was a member of the
Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). At its height in the NECC, the Daniel Webster Eagles comprised 17
NCAA Division III varsity athletic teams. Programs for men included baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and volleyball. Women's programs included basketball, cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, and volleyball. The college had sponsored men's tennis, which played on an on-campus court in the 1990s, and also briefly sponsored both wrestling and women's ice hockey. Indoor sports were played at the Mario Vagge Gymnasium, named in honor of the former Nashua mayor who served from 1958 to 1965 and was a college benefactor. The campus had fields for baseball, softball, and soccer/lacrosse. Ice hockey, which was sponsored as a club program for over two decades before joining the NCAA in 2015, was played at
Tully Forum in
Billerica, Massachusetts, as well as Skate 3 in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, then at Conway Arena in Nashua in its final years. The athletics programs had limited success during their time in the GNAC, winning just one championship (baseball in 1996). However, in the NECC with its smaller colleges, Daniel Webster won championships in baseball, men's cross country, field hockey, women's basketball, women's volleyball, and men's soccer. It also saw a significant increase in both all-conference and major conference award winners. SNHU did not acquire the Daniel Webster athletic programs. ==Disposition==