Kaplan, Inc.

Kaplan, Inc.

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Education
Founded	1938
Founder	Stanley Kaplan
Headquarters	New York City
Key people	Andrew Rosen, Chairman Tom Leppert, CEO
Revenue	US$ 2.2 billion (2013)
Parent	Graham Holdings Company
Divisions	Test Preparation, Higher Education, Professional
Website	Kaplan.com

Midtown Manhattan

Kaplan, Inc. is a for-profit corporation headquartered in New York City and was founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan. Kaplan provides higher education programs, professional training courses, test preparation materials and other services for various levels of education. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company, formerly known as The Washington Post Company.

Company

Kaplan is a for-profit subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company. Its Chairman is Andrew Rosen, and its CEO is Tom Leppert. Its 2013 revenue was $2.2 billion.

Stanley H. Kaplan, the founder of the company, died of a heart ailment on August 23, 2009. He was 90 years of age.

Subdivisions

Kaplan Higher Education

Kaplan Higher Education is a group of institutions that offer classroom and online certificate and degree programs in fields such as criminal justice, health care, business, information technology and legal studies. Iowa College Acquisition Corporation, operating under the Kaplan University brand, also offers online programs. At year-end 2013, Kaplan Higher Education had approximately 60,300 student enrolled.

Due to student loan default rates, the U.S. Department of Education has criticized for-profit institutions, with the Secretary of Education asserting that "too many for-profit schools are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use." For fiscal year 2009, Kaplan's students were more likely to default on their loans than their community college counterparts, with 17.3 percent of Kaplan University students overall not repaying loans on time. In response, Kaplan Higher Education has set up the "Kaplan Commitment" program, which allows prospective students to attend the first few sessions of a course free, to decide if it meets their needs and abilities, before taking on a financial obligation. Although, the policy is too new to show that it has an impact on graduation and retention rates.

In October 2012, Kaplan closing nine of its campuses and consolidating four others into nearby locations. Although the company did not give a reason for shuttering these locations, an August 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that an accrediting commission had warned that its campuses in Baltimore, Indianapolis and Dayton could lose their accreditation for failure to meet student achievement requirements. Loss of accreditation meant that Kalplan students would no longer be eligible for the federal student aid that makes up more than 80 percent of Kaplan’s revenues. This occurred among growing negative publicity about for-profits schools who enrolled students who had almost no chance of succeeding in order to get their federal student aid. Kaplan and the University of Phoenix announced new programs, offering some form of free trial to ensure that they enrolled only students who had a reasonable likelihood of success, which cut substantially into their enrollment numbers.

Kaplan also operates the online Concord Law School, which is currently unaccredited by the American Bar Association — graduates of the programs are eligible only to take the California Bar Exam, given that it is the only state in which online law schools can officially register. Outside the United States, Kaplan offers a number of higher education, professional training and English/pathways programs, including Dublin Business School in Ireland, which offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in business and the liberal arts, and Kaplan Higher Education (formerly called Asia Pacific Management Institute) in Hong Kong / Singapore.

Kaplan Professional

Kaplan Professional offers education for licensing, certification, and training purposes, in areas including accounting, insurance, securities, real estate, financial planning, information technology, and architecture. Kaplan Financial Ltd., a national UK company that offers accounting and financial services training in the United Kingdom and in Asia, was acquired in 2003 (as The Financial Training Company). In September 2007, Kaplan Law School was opened in London, in partnership with Nottingham Law School, to offer post-graduate legal training. In Australia, Kaplan provides professional training, higher education programs, and English language education. In May 2007 the UK arm of Kaplan extended its training offering from professional qualification into higher education with the introduction of Kaplan Open Learning. Kaplan Open Learning (Essex) Limited (“KOL”) has been established as an affiliate college of the University of Essex. The College provides university level education, offering programmes of study for students who wish to obtain a university Foundation Degree or top up that degree to an Honours Degree. Kaplan Open Learning is financially supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Kaplan Test Prep

Established in 1938, Kaplan Test Prep sells preparation materials for standardized tests through tutoring, on-site classes, asynchronous and live programs, print books, and digital products. With programs for individuals, schools, and businesses, Kaplan Test Prep offers preparation for more than 90 standardized tests. These include admissions tests for secondary school, college, and graduate school, such as the SAT, ACT, Law School Admission Test (LSAT), Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Dental Admission Test (DAT), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), Optometry Admission Test (OAT), Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) and others. Kaplan also provides preparation for professional licensing exams include state-specific and Multi-State Bar Review for attorneys, USMLE and COMLEX prep for physicians, and NCLEX prep for nurses. In addition, Kaplan’s K12 Learning Services business offers individualized live tutoring and customized online programs for children from kindergarten through 8th grade, as well as online instructional and professional development resources for teachers. Kaplan Test Prep also licenses material for some of its courses to third parties and a Kaplan affiliate, which, during 2010, offered courses at over 60 locations in 18 countries outside the U.S.

Outside of the United States and Canada, Kaplan operates in more than 30 countries including the UK, Mexico and France, and also operates Kaplan International Colleges, a provider of English language training and pathway programs based in the U.K.

History

Kaplan was founded in 1938 by Stanley H. Kaplan, who started the business by tutoring students for the New York State Regents Exam in the basement of his parents' Brooklyn home. He eventually opened locations around the country. In 1984, Kaplan sold the company to The Washington Post Company, which centralized control. The company grew significantly in the 1990s by expanding its business and purchasing other test preparation and educational companies. The company's leader during this expansion period was Jonathan Grayer.

Acquisitions

Major acquisitions during the last 15 years include:

• 1996 – Score, a network of after-school tutoring centers based in California with locations around the country
• 1998 – Dearborn Publishing, a publisher of professional training books in Chicago
• 2000 – Quest Education Corporation, a network of for profit schools with 30 locations that brought Kaplan into the higher education industry
• 2003 – The Financial Training Company, a provider of accounting and financial service training based in London with operations in Asia
• 2003 – Dublin Business School, a university in Ireland that offers undergraduate and postgraduate business and liberal arts programs
• 2004 – Two Sawyer College campuses: Hammond, Indiana and Merrillville, Indiana.
• 2005 – Asia Pacific Management Institute (APMI Kaplan), a Higher Education company providing Diploma to Doctoral degrees offered by different universities.
• 2006 – Tribeca Learning, a financial services and real estate training provider based in Australia
• 2006 – Aspect Education, a provider of English language instruction based in the U.K.
• 2007 – Finsia Education, a provider of financial services training.
• 2007 – EduNeering Inc., a provider in compliance and knowledge management solutions.
• 2011 – Structuralia, a leading provider of training and education in Spain.
• 2011 – Carrick Education Group, a leading vocational and higher education provider in Australia.
• 2011 – Franklyn Scholar, a leading national provider of work-based vocational training in Australia.
• 2012 – Academy, a focused corporate training and organisational development services provider
• 2012 - beo Japan, a Japanese study-abroad student recruitment agency

Lawsuit

In 2007 Kaplan agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that had been brought against Kaplan and BarBri, a company offering a widely used bar exam preparation course. Among the allegations in the suit, which charged that BarBri had overcharged students, was an allegation of federal antitrust violation claiming that Kaplan had agreed not to compete in the bar review business while BarBri agreed it would not compete in the LSAT business. Both West Publishing Company (parent of BarBri) and Kaplan denied the allegations and the matter was resolved without any findings of wrongdoing, with BarBri and Kaplan paying $30 million to the class claimants.

External links

• Kaplan, Inc.
• Article on history of Kaplan's founder by Malcolm Gladwell