How do you turn a for-profit college into a not-for-profit? Partner with a public university—and pay $50 million for the privilege. That’s basically what happened on Thursday, in a financial deal between the for-profit Kaplan higher-education chain and Purdue University, the flagship Indiana college run by Mitch Daniels, the state’s former governor. The arrangement may help Kaplan parent Graham Holdings Inc. shed the for-profit education sector’s tarnished reputation. Purdue—paying Graham only a symbolic $1—immediately enters the ranks of public universities expanding their reach with online degrees targeting older Americans—many of them minorities—who are unable to attend traditional schools. “We thought it would be a bad idea for us to build this on our own,” said Daniels, Purdue’s president. “We’ve seen a lot of schools throw a lot of money at online education without much result.” Under the contract, Graham will transfer Kaplan University’s online programs, as well as its 15 campuses and learning centers—with 32,000 students—to the Purdue-related non-for-profit. Kaplan will then operate them and guarantee that Purdue’s venture, for five years, receive at least $10 million a year from its revenues after expenses. After that payment, Kaplan is entitled to reimbursement for its own cost of providing services, plus a fee equal to 12.5 percent of the Purdue affiliate’s revenues. Kaplan Higher Education reported $617 in revenue last year and almost $67 million in operating income. Kaplan was once the crown jewel of Washington Post Co., as its fast-growing colleges helped support its financially struggling newspaper. In 2013, the company sold the Post to Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and then changed the name of the company to Graham Holdings, after the Washington family that had long controlled the paper. Donald Graham, then the Post Co. chief executive officer, is still the Graham Holdings chairman. For-profit colleges including Kaplan have seen their fortunes dim amid scrutiny from Congress and state