HUGE News: Purdue acquiring Kaplan University

Nope. Not a late April Fool's joke or anything:

Purdue to acquire Kaplan University, increase access for millions - Purdue University

And also here:

http://www.purduenewu.org/

 

That is like when Mercedes acquired Chrysler and someone looked into their garage at their Chrysler and said, "wow....I always wanted to own a Mercedes".

From Kaplan to a Purdue degree. Doesn't Kaplan own Concordia Law?

 

No! Kaplan University owns Concord Law School, which is Concord Law School of Kaplan University.

I am wondering if Purdue rebrand Kaplan University to Purdue University - Global Campus likes Colorado State University - Global Campus.

 

Lol......meant Concord School of Law...not Concordia.

 

Possible but doubtful. Purdue has a well established brand. They could just roll out an online learning program through third party vendors for a lot less money than acquiring an existing RA school.

Kaplan's brand isn't terrible. They are well known in the test prep area and they have, as a for-profit school, largely remained unscathed by scandal. That doesn't mean it won't go through some form of rebranding. But Purdue didn't buy a fixer upper here.

Though only time will tell what the finished product will look like.

 

It's an interesting and most unusual deal. Kaplan will continue to run the university, and gets 12.5% of the revenues from Purdue, with a 30-year contract. Purdue can back out of the deal if Kaplan suffers $75 million in operating losses during the 30 years. Since the deal does not include Kaplan Test Prep, which accounts for more than 60% of its profits, and since Kaplan enrollment has declined over 20% in the last few years (currently at 32,000), this is not out of the question.

The deal says that Kaplan "will operate as a new Indiana public university.

The Washington Post article (http://tinyurl.com/kl4zt8r) says that Purdue is paying $1 up front. Hell, I'd have paid $3 at least.

 

The online announcements say that the new university will use Purdue name "in a form to be defined". So I fully expect it to be called Purdue Global or some such.

 

Kaplan is one of the better-known for-profits and, with that, comes an automatic stigma, but not as bad as Devry. Kaplan is very fortunate. Now, who is going to buy the failing University of Phoenix?

 

Just happened. The parent company, Apollo Education Group was just bought two months ago for $1.1 billion by a consortium led by the the Vistria Group of Chicago, founded by Marty Nesbitt, identified by the NY Times as one of Barack Obama's closest friends and head of the Obama Foundation. The purchase price was $10 a share, down from $89 a share eight years ago.

Incidentally, four days before Obama left office, the Dept. of Defense lifted its ban on the U of Phoenix recruiting on military bases, which sounds to me like a rather huge gift from Obama to a close friend.

 

Wasn't the ban lifted a year ago? It was already determined that University of Phoenix would be on heightened monitoring for a year after the ban was lifted, so the heightened monitoring was due to end January 2017.

Pentagon lifts University of Phoenix military recruiting ban - LA Times

 

If their naming convention with UIPUI is any indication then it may be clunkier than that...

 

uipui?????

 

After the stock price had been driven down by almost 90% due to relentless attacks on "for-profit" higher education in general, and on Phoenix in particular, by the Obama administration and its allies (teacher's unions, media).

Conventional good-faith mom-and-pop stock investors in the supposedly burgeoning field of educational entrepeneurship had been essentially wiped out and probably largely bailed. (To say nothing of the damage done to all the U. of Phoenix graduates whose degrees and hard work were devalued.)

Then an investment group led by Obama's friends pick up the broken pieces just in time for an administration more friendly to for-profit higher education to take office and Vistria's investors (which might include Obama himself in a sweetheart deal) catch the rebound and get rich. Nice, if ironic.

Welcome to the swamp.

 

Indiana University-Purdue University--Indianapolis

I apologize, I misrepresented the acronym. It's likely because whenever I reference this particular school I pronounce it "ooie-pooie."

It's actually IUPUI

 

IUPUI. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.

It started out as a state medical school/health science campus run jointly by both of Indiana's flagship universities. Over the years it gradually put in many non-health related degree programs to serve the educational needs of the population of the state capital. So now it's Indianapolis' state university.

 

I'm just saying that the possibility that Kaplan University will now be "KAPU" or "KUPU" or "KUP" shouldn't be discounted.

Maybe even "PUK?"

 

As long as they are not KAPUT

Kaplan is a house name for test prep. Not only degrees. https://kaplan.com/

In the migrant community, Kaplan has the best name for preparing professionals such as foreign MD's and other professionals to pass National, State Board examinations for licensing.

Many of my friends took PE review course. Walked out of the exam fully confident that they had passed.
The only complaint I heard was that people are not fans of their book. The problems are not at all like the exam problems.
I have a good friend who is MD, he took Kaplan prep in In Chicago, he was MD in Russia for 10 years after graduation.
He passed the exams.
I also know a couple of persons who failed their first exam and retook it.

 

I'm going to enroll at Kaplan just so I can be a Boilermaker!