Adtalem Global Education announced today that it will acquire Walden University, an online institution that enrolls 48,000 students, from Laureate Education. Adtalem agreed to a pay $1.48 billion for Walden, the company said.
The for-profit Walden has one of the largest online enrollments in the U.S., following just the University of Phoenix and Grand Canyon University in total enrollments among for-profit institutions, according to federal data. Most of Walden’s students are enrolled in graduate programs — just 7,000 are undergrads. About a third of its students are in nursing programs, with its next biggest enrollments in education, management and social work.
Adtalem is the former DeVry Education Group. In 2017 it sold DeVry University, once a large, prominent player in higher education, to a small private company.
Laureate has been selling off institutions for several years. The Baltimore-based, publicly traded Laureate has long been known for its broad global campus network. But Laureate in recent years has been selling off many international institutions as it shifts toward emerging or large markets, including South and Central America.