Closure Announced by Northwestern College

 Northwestern College in Oak Lawn, IL announced this past week that it will close. 

Northwestern Business College was founded in 1902 on what was then 1747 N. Robey Street in Chicago by J.F. Fish. And while it changed owners and locations over the years, it remained a family-owned educational enterprise. 

The college relocated to the Logan Square area of Chicago after 1918 and was sold a time or two before Myrtle M. Voss assumed ownership in the 1930s. In 1958 Violet and Edward Schumacher purchased the college. Then in 1977, Lawrence Schumacher and Nancy Schumacher Kucienski formed Lancelot Inc. and purchased the college. The curriculum expanded to offer programs in computers and word processing. 

The institution relocated in in 1981 to the northwest side of Chicago and in 1987 a second campus was opened in Palos Hills, IL. Then in 2001 a third campus was added in Naperville. Accreditation was gained through The Higher Learning Commission. Lawrence Schumacher assumed sole ownership in 2007 and the name changed to Northwestern College. The institution moved in 2022 to the Oak Lwn campus on the corner of 95th and Cicero Avenues.

If you are interested in recent trends for closures, mergers, and acquisitions access College Closures since 2009 in the index at the right of any College History Garden page. There are separate tabs for non-profit closures, for-profit closures, and one for mergers and acquisitions. Each tab includes basic information for the institutions, i.e., Carnegie Classification, sector, accrediting agency, and the IPEDS unitid.