Wittenborg College was founded in 1987 in the Dutch
Hanseatic city of
Deventer by a local businessman, H. Nijkamp. The school became known for its Dutch language programmes in banking and insurance and real estate management, providing these industries in the Netherlands with hundreds of college graduates. Its main source of students in the late 1980s and early 1990s was military personnel leaving the armed forces due to the abolition of national service in the Netherlands. In 2002, Wittenborg partnered with BTC, an international family consultancy specialised in corporate training programmes, and founded the Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences which began developing its international, English language, business programmes, gaining state accreditation from the European-recognised NVAO in 2006. Since 2006, Wittenborg has developed as a business school focused on entrepreneurship and SME management within an international context. Since then, the school has attracted students from around the world to study in the Netherlands emerging as an international management institute focusing on business, hospitality and communication within a global context. All programmes are offered in English to students from more than 97 countries. In September 2016, in her letter to the Dutch Parliament, Minister of Education, Culture and Science (in Dutch "
minister van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap") Jet Bussemaker, mentioned Wittenborg as an example of an institute that had implemented internationalisation across its whole profile. ==New location==