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.^[1]

Company

Kaplan is a for-profit subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. Its Chairman and CEO is Jonathan Grayer. Its 2007 revenue was more than $2 billion.^[1]

Subdivisions

Kaplan Higher Education is a group of institutions that offer fixed-facility and online certificate and degree programs in fields such as criminal justice, health care, business, information technology and legal studies. Kaplan University also offers online programs, and had approximately 37,000 students in 2007.^[1] Kaplan also owns the online Concord Law School. Outside the United States, Kaplan operates Dublin Business School in Ireland, which offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in business and the liberal arts, and Asia Pacific Management Institute (APMI Kaplan) in Hong Kong / Singapore.

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, a London-based 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 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 and kaptest.co.uk sells 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, CPA, and TOEFL exams. Outside of the United States and Canada, Kaplan operates in the UK and France, and also operates Kidum, a test preparation company in Israel, and Aspect, a provider of English language training based in the U.K.

Kaplan K12 Learning Services provides educational materials and services to children in grades pre-K through 12 and individual school districts,^[1] and advises school districts on compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act. Also, Kaplan's Score Learning Centers provide after-school tutoring services in reading and math for children in grades kindergarten to tenth grade.

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 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^[2]

In June 2004, certain ISPs began the unusual step of blacklisting the educational domain http://www.kaplancollege.edu after research showed that the college had been using spam to advertise its courses^[3].

Acquisitions

Major acquisitions during the last 10 years include:^[4]

• 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 Inc. recently agreed to settle a class action lawsuit that had been brought against BAR/BRI and Kaplan. Among the allegations in the suit, which charged that BAR/BRI had overcharged students, was an allegation of antitrust violation claiming that Kaplan had agreed not to compete in the bar review business while BAR/BRI agreed it would not compete in the LSAT business. Both West Publishing Company (parent of BAR/BRI), and Kaplan, Inc., denied the allegations and the matter was resolved without any finding of wrongdoing.^[5]

References

1. ↑ ^{a b c d}
2. ↑ Kaplan, Stanley H. Test Pilot. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
3. ↑ http://www.joewein.net/spam/spam-kaplancollege-edu.htm
4. ↑ About Kaplan Press Releases
5. ↑ BAR/BRI Class Action Lawsuit website

External links

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