Rasmussen College - History

History

The school was founded in 1900 by Walter Rasmussen as the Rasmussen Practical School of Business, located in Stillwater, Minnesota. Rasmussen believed that the need for skilled professionals by the local business community was not being met.

The first classes were held in September 1900. With the advent of women's suffrage in 1920 through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the school’s female enrollment numbers began to increase. In 1945 Walter Rasmussen retired and named Walter Nemitz to succeed him as director of the college. Nemitz had been already with the college since 1934 and as director instituted a number of curriculum upgrades. By 1950, over 22,400 students had graduated from the school.

In 1961, Wilbur Nemitz and Robert Nemitz, both sons of Walter Nemitz, took ownership of the school. In 1974, Rasmussen College acquired the St. Cloud Business College, and in 1979 it acquired the Northern Technical School of Business. In 1983, the school opened a campus in Mankato, Minnesota. Additional campuses were subsequently opened in Eagan, Minnesota (1989) and St. Cloud, Minnesota (1997), Rockford, Illinois (2006), Lake Elmo, Minnesota, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Blaine, Minnesota (2010), Topeka, Kansas (2013), Overland Park, Kansas (2013) and Green Bay, Wisconsin (all 2007), Mokena-Tinley Park, Illinois (2010) and Wausau, Wisconsin (2010).

The school also opened an online campus in 2002. The school acquired Aakers College in North Dakota and Webster College in Florida and merged the schools into Rasmussen's operations. Presently, the school has over 100,000 graduates.