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The new online university born out of an unlikely relationship between a public, land-grant institution and a for-profit college will be called Purdue University Global, officials announced Thursday.
The news comes nine months after Indiana-based Purdue University first announced plans to acquire Kaplan University, an online university and popular destination for military and veteran students.
“Our campuses are typically named after the physical locations where they hold classes,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels said in a news release. “Purdue University Global can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time. The name proved appealing and meaningful to our various stakeholders – most importantly prospective students.”
The new university, dubbed “NewU” until now, has received unanimous approval from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and a green light to continue the acquisition process from the Education Department. The deal must also get a sign-off from the Higher Learning Commission, Purdue and Kaplan’s regional accreditor, before it becomes official.
An HLC spokesman told Military Times in December that the commission was reviewing a change-of-control application from the school and expected to take action in the coming months.
According to information provided by Purdue last April, the university's feasibility studies indicated that if Purdue were to start from scratch, it would take 36 months to create a single online degree program and much longer to create an online school of the magnitude it is acquiring with Kaplan.
“A careful analysis made it clear that we are very ill-equipped to build the necessary capabilities ourselves, and that the smart course would be to acquire them if we could,” Daniels said at the time. “We were able to find exactly what we were looking for.”
