Apollo Group, corporate parent of the University of Phoenix, has agreed to buy Carnegie Learning Inc., a spinoff of Carnegie Mellon University that markets Cognitive Tutor software, for $75 million. In a separate transaction, Apollo agreed to pay Carnegie Mellon $21.5 million over a 10-year period to acquire related technology.

Carnegie Learning was founded in 1988 by CMU cognitive and computer scientists, including John Anderson and Ken Koedinger, in conjunction with veteran mathematics teachers. Its math tutoring software now is used by more than 600,000 students in 3,000 schools nationwide. It is a partner in the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, a National Science Foundation-funded center at CMU and the University of Pittsburgh that is directed by Koedinger, professor of human-computer interaction and psychology.

For more information, see Apollo's news release and coverage of the deal in the New York Times.