When Purdue University acquired Kaplan, a new higher education organism was created. Is it a hybrid or a mutant? It grafts the DNA of a for-profit storefront operation onto the trunk of a traditional Big-10 university.

Purdue-Kaplan, now branded as Purdue Global, is a high-stakes experiment in academic horticulture.  It is an acquisition model, rather than an organic growth approach followed by many others. At risk is the value of the Purdue brand that has taken more than a century to build.

Traditionalists have been fighting a rear guard action against the digital transformation of higher education.  They have been husbanding the remaining twigs of the medieval university.  Perhaps avoiding resistance from traditionalists justified the Kaplan acquisition to rapidly expand Purdue’s online presence.

Hybridists -Meanwhile, hybridists have been creating new species for decades.  Relatively unknown publics and non-profits like Central Michigan and Columbia College (Missouri) expanded their online programs years ago.  They expanded organically from their founding campus through a series of dispersed locations and far-flung programs.  Unheralded Southern New Hampshire University used its modest original campus to validate a dramatic and well-advertised national on-line expansion.  Academic behemoths like Penn State and Arizona State have grown online programs nearing 100,000 students each.

These hybrid expansions are largely based on the traditional DNA of the original institution.  As hybridization experiments have grown, institutions have worked to keep their traditional image intact.  Ironically, the additional revenue from hybrid on-line programs has allowed reinvestment in the traditional image.

In another part of the academic biome, for-profit entities like the University of Phoenix and non-profit Western Governors University have vied for fluctuating online and competency-based market share.

The Purdue experiment is something different.  The DNA of Kaplan lacks the academic tradition and rigor that produced generations of excellence in leadership from Neil Armstrong to Brian Lamb. The grafting of this tissue to the trunk of Purdue will undoubtedly produce new revenue and provide new customers. But at what cost and compared to what alternatives?

Viewed in the context of decades of experimentation, the Purdue effort can be seen as a new model of academic horticulture.   The message of “global innovation” may offset the risks to Purdue’s reputation and academic standing.  Surely students who had signed on to the Kaplan brand will view the “Purdue” imprimatur as a significant upgrade.

Perhaps Purdue Global, run as a separate business, will not compromise the value of the Purdue brand, and the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.  This would make it more like a successful farmer who grows a different crop on a new farm rather than changing the crops on the original farm.  Instead of leading to a mutant Purdue, Purdue Global may be only the first of the new farms that Purdue will acquire.  More than Indiana farmers will be watching.

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