FEDERAL COURT, July 30 – Purdue
University Global has formally opposed Inner City Press's
motion to unseal the summary judgment record in the case
of a law student suing the online school over her
dismissal weeks before what she says was to have been her
August 25, 2026 graduation.
The university's brief calls the case
"already far more complicated than its subject matter
warrants" and argues Inner City Press, a "non-party media
organization with no direct stake in the outcome," should
not be permitted to intervene at all.
Buried in Purdue Global's own opposition is
a concession that undercuts it. The university states it
"claims no institutional privacy interest" in the sealed
exhibits and "does not object to public disclosure if
Plaintiff consents." That is the entirety of its case for
secrecy — not a privacy or competitive interest of its
own, but a supposition about what its own former student
wants.
The supposition appears to be wrong.
After Inner City Press's reply was filed, the plaintiff emailed a response — copying both opposing counsel and the presiding judge's chambers — that leaves little doubt where she stands. "I want the records in this case completely unsealed so that the public can see the discrimination firsthand," she wrote, pointing specifically to an exhibit she says shows "the exact dynamics used against me." She described herself as disabled and currently homeless, said she emptied her bank account to travel to federal court in Hammond, Indiana, to fight her dismissal, and wrote that "racist instructors have stripped" her scheduled graduation "away from me" — allegations that are hers, disputed by the defendants, and not yet tested by the Court. "Because I am currently unable to e-file and am terrified of doing anything that might anger the judge, the press is my only real outlet to expose what is happening," she wrote, calling it "a classic David vs. Goliath battle" and asking that her account "give a voice to my fight."
Inner City Press, we report what we find.
Start with what Purdue Global actually is.
In 2018, Purdue's public university system paid one dollar
for the for-profit Kaplan University and rebranded it
Purdue University Global — while signing a 30-year
contract keeping Kaplan Inc. as the exclusive operator of
the school's actual, non-academic business, including
marketing. Internal contract terms, obtained by The
Century Foundation through a federal records request
Purdue had itself resisted, locked in Kaplan's existing
admissions standards and barred policies that could
"negatively impact enrollment growth."
Purdue Global spent roughly $100 million on
advertising in a single early year. Two U.S. Senators
wrote directly to Purdue's president over the school's
continued use of forced arbitration clauses stripping
students of the right to sue — the same right
Lawtone-Bowles is now, unusually, actually exercising, pro
se, from a courtroom in Hammond, Indiana. More
directly relevant to her case: Purdue University Global is
named, specifically, in the Department of Education's
roughly $6 billion Sweet v. Cardona settlement, which
grants automatic student-loan relief to borrowers who
attended a list of schools the Department itself
determined showed "strong signs of substantial
misconduct... whether credibly alleged or in some cases
proven."
The Kaplan history is worth dwelling on,
because none of it is disputed or alleged — it comes from
the company's own regulatory record and from a public
university's own contract. Kaplan University was, before
the Purdue deal, already a recognizable name in
for-profit-college scrutiny: Harvard Law School's Legal
Services Center issued a 2017 report detailing complaints
from veterans and active-duty servicemembers that Kaplan
had misled them about program costs, academic quality, and
whether their credits would transfer elsewhere. Florida's
Attorney General closed an investigation into Kaplan the
same era after the company agreed to change what
regulators called "misleading" marketing to prospective
students.
When Purdue's board announced the
acquisition in 2017, faculty were not consulted
beforehand; one professor described the reaction in the
room as "stunned silence." The structure Purdue
agreed to preserve is what makes the "public university"
label do more work than it should. Century Foundation's
records request uncovered a "Policy Guide" governing the
Purdue-Kaplan relationship that locked in Kaplan's
pre-existing admissions standards — standards developed
under for-profit incentive structures that had already
drawn regulatory scrutiny — and explicitly barred any
policy that could "negatively impact enrollment growth."
New students at Purdue Global are still bound to mandatory
arbitration and class-action waivers as a condition of
enrollment, a practice virtually unheard of at public
universities and common at the for-profit schools the
public sector is supposed to be an alternative to;
Senators Durbin and Brown wrote to Purdue's Board of
Trustees in 2018 specifically to ask that this practice
end, and, per their own follow-up letter, received no
response for nearly a year.
None of that history required
Lawtone-Bowles's lawsuit to surface. It was already
sitting in the public record, describing the institution
she says stripped away her law degree weeks before
graduation — the institution now asking a federal court to
let it keep its own explanation for that decision
sealed.
Inner City Press has replied. Watch this
site.
