Purdue's main campus in West Lafayette is the best-known, noted for its highly regarded programs in engineering and adjacent subjects.

The system's main, most well-known, and largest university is located in West Lafayette, Indiana, on the banks of the Wabash River.

Prior to their establishment as official universities, the campuses offered technical courses as part of the national defense training program with the federal government during World War II.

IUPUI was integrated into the IU system budget but was semi-autonomous in that it retained some independent control of its own academic curricula.

After the split of IUPUI in 2024, Purdue no longer has involvement in the campus and it has been renamed Indiana University Columbus.

The school's online program manager is Kaplan Higher Education, a division of Graham Holdings Company.

As with other campuses in the system, PG has its own faculty, admissions policies, and curriculum but is overseen ultimately by the Purdue University Board of Trustees.

Purdue Global offers certificates, and degrees at the associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral level.

In 2023, Forbes reported that Purdue Global owed Kaplan Higher Education $128 million and that it may not be able to repay its debt to the for-profit servicer.

These are located in Anderson, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Lafayette, New Albany, Richmond, Vincennes, and South Bend.

Each office provides information and analysis for farmers, agricultural-industry employees, gardeners, naturalists, and homeowners.

In 1869, it was decided that the college would be founded near the city of Lafayette and established as Purdue University, in the name of the institution's principal benefactor.

After the return of a large number of veterans at the close of World War II, Purdue University opened over forty extension centers throughout Indiana.

[17] Through these many extension centers Purdue University offered freshman-level classes for both the purpose of the convenience of students starting their college studies close to their residence before taking the more major step of transferring to the main campus in West Lafayette as well as the purpose of off-loading a substantial number of freshmen from residential and classroom resources that were in short supply on the main campus in order to handle the rapid major expansion in enrollment following the periods of smaller enrollment during both the Great Depression and World War II.

Of these over forty extension centers, five were retained over the multiple decades since WWII and transformed into institutions that grant degrees that require four or more years of study.

Purdue University founded the Purdue Fort Wayne Extension Center downtown in the fall of 1941 to provide a site in Fort Wayne for students to begin their undergraduate studies prior to transferring to the West Lafayette main campus to complete their degree.

The new Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) campus opened on September 17, 1964, following nearly two years of construction that began on October 18, 1962.

At the time of its dissolution in 2018, IPFW was a 520-acre (2.1 km2) campus on both sides of the Saint Joseph River with 13 educational buildings, plus student residences and various other athletic facilities and parking structures.

[citation needed] In December 2016, the governing boards of the IU[18] and Purdue systems[19] initially approved a plan to split IPFW into two separate institutions.

[20] Effective July 1, 2018, IPFW's academic programs in health sciences were taken over by IU under the identity of Indiana University Fort Wayne (IUFW).

[20] PFW continues to provide administrative services and general education classes for IUFW students.

North Central was also established as a regional extension, initially offering classes in LaPorte and Michigan City.

All classes were centralized in 1949, and the university purchased a 160-acre (65 ha) site in 1962 to begin the process of converting what was then known as the Barker Memorial Center to a full regional campus.

The Purdue Northwest Pride fields 15 NCAA Division II teams, all of which compete in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

The same is true for the IUPUC Crimson Pride, whose four teams started competition in the River States Conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics in the 2022–23 academic year.