Thought Leaders in Online Education: Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Break it down for me a little bit. Talk about departments within Purdue that are using this. How is it getting rolled out to the broader Purdue community? You said it went to 30,000 people because of the Purdue partnership and acquisition. Talk a but more about that.

Gregory Marino: The first part of the strategy was just to acquire Kaplan University. That was a fully-functioning, accredited institution integrated with Purdue.

Sramana Mitra: What happens to that now? Are people still getting Kaplan University degrees, or are people going to be getting Purdue degrees going forward?

Gregory Marino: They get a Purdue University Global degree. There are now four institutions within Purdue – Purdue West Lafayette, Purdue University Global formerly known as Kaplan University, Purdue Northwest, and Purdue Fort Wayne. 

Which of those schools you graduate from determines the degree you earn. It’s a separately-accredited institution that has been rebranded as Purdue University Global.

The first part that Purdue was interested in was moving more online, providing access to the adult segment. These are your non-traditional students that are also leveraging the capabilities that they acquired to expand online learning throughout the Purdue system.

We’re also the exclusive provider for online enablement for the other Purdue schools as well. You should expect additional online offerings from Krannert – their school of business. We have an engagement with the nursing school at Purdue Northwest. They are moving rapidly with their online adaption as a result of the partnership with Kaplan.

Sramana Mitra: What are the strengths of the Kaplan program in terms of digital learning? Where is the program really strong?

Gregory Marino: Kaplan is a pioneer in online education. We have been doing this for more than two decades. Our first online offering was a law school. We created Concord Law School based in California. That was our first online delivery. It’s 100% online. Graduates of that institution sit for the California State Bar.

There’re a number of assets and capabilities that we have on the online space. For starters, learning science. We believe in applying data when making learning decisions. We do that through the equivalent of medical-controlled trials. We have what’s called the research pipeline.

When we make changes in our curriculum, we’ll run tight test and control groups. We can do this because of our scale. We start classes every three to four weeks with thousands of students. We can understand, pretty quickly, the effects of a particular change whether it’s curriculum, processes, or organizational change.

The interventions we do tend to be scientifically based. Learning science is one of our core competencies. The use of data and analytics is another competency. We measure just about everything. Changes are rarely made by the gut. They’re all data-based.

We can really understand the effects of a change. We believe in return on educational investment. We look at how this impacts learning outcomes, how it impacts the return on investment for a student. Of course, how it affects an institution ensuring that they’re able to make sound investments on things that are leading to outcomes that matter most.

Our digital marketing is key as well in online enablement. We work with millions of students annually. Our go-to-market strategy tends to be unique and fine-tuned in a way that it becomes very personalized as well for the student.

Sramana Mitra: Let me double-click down on each of those topics that you talked about. Let’s start with the content. Is all content developed internally or are you getting content from outside of the Kaplan organization?

Gregory Marino: It’s procured in different fashions. When we decide to bring a program based on market needs, we identify subject matter experts within the institution and the respective disciplines. We engage instructional designers both at the institution and at Kaplan.

We tend to be career-focused. Employers are helping us in the design of our curriculum as well. The publishers tend to play a role. The publishers will assist in curriculum development as well.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education
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