A landmark agreement between Northcentral Technical College and Purdue University-Global was announced this week that will allow all NTC students to seamlessly continue their education and graduate from Purdue.
The partnership will allow students, both past and present, that have completed a degree from NTC to apply those credits to continue their education at the West Lafayette, IN school while remaining in Central Wisconsin.
Purdue Dean Keith Smith says their motto is "no credits left behind," meaning they will count all NTC classes towards their own degrees. "In many of our programs we can say they won't lose any credit at all," said Smith. "What we are trying to do here is create a partnership that truly enables students to go step-by-step towards the degree in the career path towards the job that they want."
Through the partnership, the colleges are working together to expand online baccalaureate degree options offered at NTC through Purdue including Business Administration, Criminal Justice, Fire Services Leadership, Human Services, Medical Assistant, Nursing, Organizational Leadership and more. "I think it's a merging of two innovative minds," he added. "These are people who are thinking 'what's going to work best for the student, it may not be the norm or tradition, but what can we do differently?'"
NTC President Dr. Lori Weyers said it's exciting to be able to bring the prestige of a Purdue degree to the Wausau campus. "They are innovative, they are creative, and it is a wonderful partnership for our students at NTC to have another great option to continue their education." Weyers said the school's reputation as one of the top online community colleges in the nation certainly preceded it. "Purdue was thinking about having an arm to get into the online market, and they were looking for some strategic partners as we were at NTC. So it was a mutual thing where they contacted us, and we were very excited to want to work with them."
Purdue has similar partnerships in place with scores of other community colleges across the country including Waukesha County Tech, Gateway Community College, and a partnership with Milwaukee Area Technical College is also in the works.
