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1889 – 2020
Founded: Organized in August 1889 by Professor Thomas L. Staples, who had founded the first of six "International" colleges in Ontario in 1882, to teach the penmanship and bookkeeping the business houses of the day required. The college was incorporated under Indiana law by the turn of the century.
Course: John A. Kalbfleisch taught at the college from 1906 to 1927 and was its president in his last two years there, before founding Indiana Tech. Bradford Schools Inc. of Pittsburgh acquired the college in 1969. In its later years it sat in the Village at Coventry, 5699 Coventry Lane, offering business, technology and health care programs; enrollment had fallen below 500, to 244 students in the fall of 2017.
Fate: The college announced in 2019 that it would stop accepting students and wind the Fort Wayne campus down on declining enrollment, teaching out its remaining students. The state defunct-institutions list records the Fort Wayne institution's closure as February 28, 2020, with transcripts held through the Indianapolis campus; some accounts date the campus's effective end to 2017, and both are carried as they stand.
Sources:
- International Business College (Fort Wayne, Indiana) (Wikipedia) — founded 1889; Coventry campus.
- Indiana Business Journal (Apr. 2019) — the wind-down; Bradford ownership from 1969; Staples and the 1882 Ontario founding.
- Indiana Commission for Higher Education / Board for Proprietary Education, defunct institutions list — closure Feb. 28, 2020.