Throughout the 2020–21 academic year, Daniels and Purdue claimed that Purdue offered as much in-person instruction as any university its size. The university conducted 212,456 COVID tests and had 6,158 positive tests among employees and students with 99% having no worse than moderate symptoms but 14 being hospitalized. Acquisition of Kaplan and launch of Purdue Global In 2017, Daniels and the Purdue Board of Trustees announced the intention to acquire Kaplan University for the purpose of transforming it into an online, self-sustaining, public benefit corporation, now rebranded as Purdue University Global. The acquisition has been met with both considerable praise and significant criticism. Among those who expressed favor before the deal closed included Barack Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Ted Mitchell who led Obama's crackdown on for-profit universities. Among the critics of the acquisition were Purdue faculty. At the time, the Purdue University Senate called the deal a "violation of common-sense educational practice". During the acquisition Purdue Faculty senate responded by established a Select Committee to provide oversight for the new entity. Shortly after the intended acquisition was announced, 319 signed a petition opposing the deal citing numerous concerns, including, "Purdue University is not creating new access to higher education but merely becoming the owner of a preexisting corporation, with some danger to Purdue's current reputation and operation" and "The business model of Kaplan University rests upon adult learners and is completely dependent on the federal loans that most are required to take to fund their educations." In May 2017, the Purdue University Senate passed a resolution condemning the deal between Kaplan Higher Education and Purdue University. In September 2017, Senators Dick Durbin(D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) warned that Purdue's acquisition of Kaplan University posed major risks for Purdue University's students and reputation. They added that Kaplan has a “shameful record” as a “predatory” school. While leaders of the university senate have continued to object to the manner in which Purdue Global was acquired, the current chair of the senate has been quoted saying she is "giving Purdue Global the benefit of the doubt" and sees Global as an extension of Purdue's land grant mission "without spending $50 million building a new building to house students 10 years from now." The co-chair of the Select Committee on Global said in January 2020, "it's more a wait-and-see kind of thing". The American Association of University Professors criticized PG's (now