Over the weekend, The Washington Post had an in-depth article regarding its relationship with the Kaplan chain of for-profit schools. Kaplan is a multinational, multibillion-dollar enterprise with 70 campuses and nearly 100,000 students, many of them online, and many of them reliant on government aid. In 2010, more than 90 percent of revenue at Kaplan’s biggest division and nearly a third of The Post Co.’s revenue overall came from the U.S. government via students receiving financial aid. While Kaplan has been a profitable business, the Washington Post has struggled to remain profitable amid dramatic changes in the news industry and now calls itself “an education and media company” — no longer the other way around. However, there may be a wobble in this relationship and the article questions The Post’s acquisition of Kaplan in light of a lot of bad publicity that evolved from the federal government’s expose last year of the fraudulent practices of a number of for-profit colleges including Kaplan. Kaplan’s application rate is down 40% from last year. Regardless I give The Washington Post credit for the candid nature of this article as well as several others it has published over the last few months on Kaplan.
Tony
