Both schools are public nonprofits that used to be for-profit. Purdue Global still pays Kaplan up to 13 percent of revenue under a 30-year contract; UAGC became part of the University of Arizona in 2025.
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Purdue Global is a public, nonprofit institution that still pays its former owner, Kaplan, a share of its revenue under a contract that runs 30 years. The University of Arizona Global Campus, the former Ashford University, has no such outside operator: since September 2025 it is a public institution inside the University of Arizona. Both schools used to be for-profit, and both converted. That history is the reason the question deserves a straight answer before you enroll.
Neither school is the flagship campus its name suggests, and neither has any connection to Arizona State University, which is a separate institution altogether. We read the corporate filings, the regulators' pages and the schools' own statements to pin down who owns and runs what. Where we could not confirm a fact, we say so.
Purdue Global's FAQ calls it "a public, nonprofit institution," an Indiana public benefit corporation and part of the Purdue University system. It shares an accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, with Purdue University. It began as Kaplan University. According to a Wisconsin regulatory filing, the transfer closed on March 22, 2018, and at the same time the parties signed a Transition and Operations Support Agreement under which Kaplan supplies technology, help-desk, human resources, admissions support, financial aid administration and marketing.
That agreement is the unusual part. The filing says it has a 30-year initial term that renews automatically in five-year blocks, and that if there are enough revenues Kaplan may receive a fee of 12.5 percent of Purdue Global's revenue. The fee rises to 13 percent for fiscal years 2023 through 2027 and then returns to 12.5. Purdue Global can end the contract after year six, but only by paying 1.25 times its prior 12 months of revenue on a 10-year note.
The same filing says Purdue assumes liability for the institution's operation, while Kaplan remains obliged to indemnify Purdue for liabilities from before the closing. Our read: the nonprofit label is accurate, and it does not mean tuition stays inside the university. The filing describes a fee that depends on enough revenue being available. It does not describe a margin Purdue Global keeps first.
Kaplan belongs to Graham Holdings, a listed company. Its second-quarter 2026 filing calls Purdue Global its largest institutional client, reports that Purdue Global enrollments rose 5 percent in the first six months of 2026, and says higher education revenue rose because of an increase in the Purdue Global fee recorded. It also shows Kaplan holding a $25.5 million receivable from Purdue Global for reimbursements of services.
The 10-Q does not give the current fee percentage, so we rely on the 2019 filing for the 13 percent figure and could not verify the current rate. Purdue Global's own about page names Kaplan North America in a data-use notice about contacting prospective students, which tells you who may be contacting you. It describes no further Kaplan role.
A percentage-of-revenue fee does not prove bad behavior. It does mean the party running admissions and marketing earns more when enrollment rises, and a student fielding enrollment calls should weigh them with that in mind. We saw nothing in the sources we opened showing that Purdue Global's current enrollment practices break any rule. Equally, the structure is the reason to ask for everything in writing.
The U.S. Department of Education's final program review determination, dated August 7, 2019, covered the 2013-14 and 2014-15 award years. It found $12,329,023.27 in liabilities for federal aid returns that were not completed, of which $12,210,071 had already been repaid. Those years predate the Purdue takeover, and the reviewer examined the school in its Kaplan-era form. We found no more recent federal finding in the sources we opened, which is not the same as a clean search.
On outcomes, the College Scorecard's Purdue Global entry shows a 28 percent graduation rate. The school's own graduation rate disclosure shows 31 percent for the 2019-20 bachelor's cohort and 32 percent for the associate cohort. The two are measured differently, and neither is a good result.
The University of Arizona bought Ashford University in 2020 and renamed it, according to Higher Ed Dive. In a March 2026 message, President Suresh Garimella wrote that the Western accreditor WSCUC reaffirmed UAGC's accreditation for six years in June 2025, and that in September 2025 the Department of Education approved UAGC joining the University of Arizona as a public institution under the Arizona Board of Regents.
The same message describes two lanes. Arizona Online delivers flagship programs with the same faculty and curricula as the Tucson campus. UAGC is the career education and workforce lane. Marketing for both is being merged. The practical warning: a UAGC degree is not an Arizona Online degree, and a Tucson-sounding brand in an ad does not tell you which one you are buying. Ask which institution issues the diploma.
In March 2022, a California court ordered Ashford and its former parent Zovio to pay more than $22.37 million, finding they gave students false or misleading information about career outcomes, cost, financial aid, pace and transfer credits. In 2023 the federal government discharged $72 million for about 2,300 former students; per the Arizona Daily Star, a December 8, 2025 letter said it was "not appropriate" to seek that money back from Arizona. Higher Ed Dive adds that 261,000 borrowers who attended Ashford between March 2009 and April 2020 had $4.5 billion discharged in 2025.
The conduct is Ashford's, and the courts and the Department say it was before the University of Arizona took over. Current UAGC students are not those students. Still, the College Scorecard's UAGC entry shows a 19 percent graduation rate and 33 percent of students returning after year one. The ownership problem has been fixed on paper. The results problem is still visible in public data.
This is general information, not legal advice. Federal Student Aid says borrower defense is a legal route to discharge federal Direct Loans when a school's misconduct harmed you, that you must still have loans tied to the school, and that a federal injunction has delayed the latest rule, so the Department will not adjudicate applications under it unless the injunction lifts. Check that page for the current status before relying on it, and consider a free call to a legal aid office.
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