Kaplan, Inc.

Kaplan, Inc.

Company type	For-profit corporation
Industry	Education
Founded	1938
Founder	Stanley Kaplan
Headquarters	New York City
Key people	Andrew Rosen, CEO & Chairman
Revenue	US$ 2.6 billion (2009)
Parent	The Washington Post Company
Divisions	Kids and Schools, Test Preparation and Admissions, 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 the Washington Post Company.

Company

Kaplan is a for-profit subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. Its Chairman and CEO is Andrew Rosen. Its 2009 revenue was $2.6 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 2010 Kaplan University had approximately 58,200 students online and 7,400 in classrooms.

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." 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.

Kaplan also owns the online Concord Law School. 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 and Admissions

Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions and kaptest.co.uk sell preparation materials for standardized tests and tutoring services. Kaplan currently offers classes to prepare students for various exams: college admissions tests including the SAT and ACT; graduate school admission tests such as the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Dental Admission Test (DAT), and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT); and other tests including the NCLEX, USMLE, COMLEX, CPA, TOEFL and PCAT exams. Outside of the United States and Canada, Kaplan operates in more than 30 countries including the UK and France, and also operates Kidum, a test preparation company in Israel, and Kaplan International Colleges, a provider of English language training and pathway programs based in the U.K. Kaplan Test Prep offers test prep in these categories: SAT - http://www.kaptest.com/College/SAT/index.html

Kaplan Kids and Schools

Kaplan offers a range of programs and assessment tools for K12 students and teachers. Kaplan’s K12 programs range from after-school tutoring and virtual high school instruction for children to online curriculum development, reading and math intervention, supplemental skill and test readiness solutions, and college preparation programs for school districts.

Kaplan worked with Aspyr Media to develop and publish the educational video game futureU, which was released on August 25, 2008 for Windows and Mac OS X, and on November 5, 2008 for the Nintendo DS.

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.

Class-action lawsuit

Kaplan recently 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.

False Claims Act lawsuit

Three former academic officers at Kaplan University, an arm of Kaplan, Inc., have filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit that accuses the institution of violating the False Claims Act and defrauding the U.S. government out of more than $4 billion. The lawsuit alleges that Kaplan enrolled unqualified students, inflated their grades so they could stay enrolled, and falsified documents to obtain accreditation for certain academic programs. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida and unsealed in 2008. The federal government has declined to intervene in the case, but on May 29, 2008, filed a "statement of interest" brief opposing a Kaplan attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed. On July 6, 2010, the federal government filed a "statement of interest" brief to advise the court of its position on certain legal doctrines relevant to the case.} (July 6, 2010 Statement of Interest.) Kaplan University has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

As of the summer 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported that the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a stance in siding with several whistle-blowers in False-Claims lawsuits against various colleges owned by Kaplan Higher Education. In a memorandum filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Judge Patricia A. Seitz of the U.S. District Court in Miami was urged to permit the lawsuits against Kaplan to proceed.

External links

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