LinkedIn Corporation has entered an agreement to acquire old school online education site Lynda.com.

According to the official release, the transaction is valued at approximately $1.5 billion, in a combination of approximately 52 percent cash and approximately 48 percent stock. The deal may be subject to adjustment and is expected to close during the second quarter.

Founded way back in 1995, Lynda.com offers a subscription-based learning portal that offers access to online courses taught by industry experts. Along with its individual subscription service, the company further offers services to corporate, government and educational clients through services including lyndaEnterprise, lyndaPro, lyndaCampus, lyndaLibrary and lyndaKisok.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner explained in a blog post how the acquisition makes a good fit:

LinkedIn has the members, the jobs, a unique understanding of the skills required to do those jobs, and a publishing platform that can be accessed by roughly 350 million people to share professionally relevant knowledge. lynda.com’s service has the premium library of skills-based courses. Together, we can bring opportunities and access to knowledge that everyone deserves. And together, we can more easily build the Economic Graph by mapping together the people, jobs, skills, and knowledge that are core components of it.

Lynda.com founder Lynda Weinman said in a separate blog post:

We believe in LinkedIn’s future stewardship and vision, and feel that we have found a perfect cultural fit for our mission. We are thrilled to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and look forward to helping more people learn the skills that are needed in today’s rapidly changing economic landscape.

The acquisition of Lynda.com is LinkedIn’s largest acquisition to-date. Its last acquisition was of predictive insights app maker Refresh April 2nd.

The acquisition makes a lot of sense for LinkedIn, particularly as it continues to build out its so-called “Economic Graph” concept, where in LinkedIn is attempting to digitally map the global workforce; education providing not only more data into the graph, but also being a highly complimentary product in the LinkedIn ecosystem.

Prior to acquisition, Lynda.com had raised 2 rounds totalling $289 million. Investors included Meritech Capital Partners, Spectrum Equity, Accel Partners and TPG.