Stanley H. Kaplan started his tutoring business in the basement of his parents’ Brooklyn home in 1938. As standardised tests became a bigger fixture of US education, his company became a national operation, preparing millions of students for the SAT, LSAT, MCATs and other tests.
Kaplan was still a test-prep company when the Washington Post Co. bought it in 1984, after Richard D. Simmons, the president, convinced Katharine Graham of its potential for expansion and profits.
During the past decade, Kaplan has moved aggressively into for-profit higher education, acquiring 75 small colleges and starting the huge online Kaplan University. Now, Kaplan higher education revenues eclipse not only the test-prep operations but all the rest of the Washington Post Co.’s operations. And Kaplan’s revenue grew 9 percent during the last quarter to $743.3 million – with higher education revenues more than four times greater than those from test-prep – helping its parent company more than triple its profits.
But in the past few months, Kaplan and other for-profit education companies have come under intense scrutiny from Congress, amid growing concerns that the industry leaves too many students mired in debt and with credentials that provide little help in finding jobs.
Reports of students who leave such schools with heavy debt, only to work in low-paying jobs, have prompted the Department of Education to propose new regulations that would cut off federal financing to programs whose graduates have high debt-to-income ratios and low repayment rates.
Although Kaplan is not the largest in the industry, Post Co. Chairman, Donald Graham, has emerged as the highest-profile defender of for-profit education.
Together, Kaplan and the Post Co. spent $350,000 on lobbying in the third quarter of this year, more than any other higher-education company. And Graham has gone to Capitol Hill to argue against the regulations in private visits with lawmakers, the first time he has lobbied directly on a federal issue in a dozen years.
His newspaper, too, has editorialised against the regulations. Although it disclosed its conflict of interest, the newspaper said the regulations would limit students’ choices.
“The aim of the regulations was to punish bad actors, but the effect is to punish institutions that serve poor students,” Graham said in an interview.
He said the regulations’ emphasis on debt would make it harder for Kaplan to serve older working students who must take out loans to attend school.
The company has acknowledged, however, that the new rules could hurt Kaplan. According to 2009 data released this summer by the Department of Education, only 28 per cent of Kaplan’s students were repaying their student loans. That figure is well below the 45 per cent threshold that most programs will need to remain fully eligible for the federal aid on which they rely. By comparison, 44 per cent of students at the largest for-profit, the University of Phoenix, were repaying their loans.
Kaplan is facing several legal challenges. The Florida attorney general is investigating eight for-profit schools, including Kaplan, for alleged misrepresentation of financial aid and deceptive practices regarding recruitment, enrolment, accreditation, placement and graduation rates.
Kaplan is also facing several federal whistle-blower lawsuits whose accusations dovetail with the findings of an undercover federal investigation of the for-profit industry this summer, including footage of high-pressure recruiting and unrealistic salary promises.
“The claims they make are absurd and simply not reflective of the kind of company that Kaplan is,” said Andrew S. Rosen, Kaplan’s chairman. “We’re confident that when a court rules, we’ll have a clear demonstration that this is not who Kaplan is.”
TROUBLES AND GROWTH
The growth of the for-profit education sector – which offers more flexible schedules and online classes than community colleges, at far higher tuition – has been nothing short of explosive.
The University of Phoenix has more than 450,000 students, for example, and the Education Management Corp., DeVry, Corinthian Colleges, the Career Education Corp. and Kaplan enrol more than 100,000 each.
All these schools get most of their revenue from federal student aid. Kaplan Higher Education, for example, gets 91.5 percent of its revenue from the federal government, through Pell grants, Stafford loans, military and veterans benefits and other aid.
On average, for-profit colleges spend about 30 percent of their revenue on advertising and marketing.
Lawmakers and Department of Education officials have become increasingly concerned that too much of the $26.5 billion in federal student aid that went to for-profit colleges last year enriched shareholders and company executives, rather than helping students.
Such schools enrol about 11 percent of the nation’s college students and get a quarter of all federal student aid. But their students account for 43 percent of those defaulting on student loans.
These statistics have prompted inquiries about the schools’ business practices. This summer, Senator Tom Harkin’s committee, in oversight hearings on the industry, watched undercover videos about high-pressure recruiting tactics that Kaplan and others used to sign up students.
Using hidden cameras, investigators from the Government Accountability Office found deception or fraud at 15 for-profit colleges, including two Kaplan campuses.
The undercover videos showed Kaplan recruiters in Florida and California making false or questionable statements to prospective students – suggesting for example, that massage therapists earn $100 an hour, and that student loans need not be paid back.
Rosen and Graham quickly issued a statement calling the video scenes “sickening,” suspended registration at the two campuses, began retraining employees and started their own “mystery shopper” program to check on employee practices.
Graham said the two locations included in the GAO investigation were not typical of what occurs at other Kaplan locations.
But dozens of current and former Kaplan employees said the videos painted a representative picture.
Four whistle-blower suits against Kaplan under the federal False Claims Act have been made public in the past few years, all making accusations that the company used deceptive practices in its quest for profits, including enrolling unqualified students and paying recruiters for each student enrolled, a practice forbidden by federal law.
In addition, the suits allege, Kaplan kept students on the books after they dropped out, inflated students’ grades and manipulated placement data to continue receiving financial aid.
Three of the suits, from Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Miami, have been consolidated for trial in Miami. A fourth, from Las Vegas, is pending there.
Kaplan has moved to dismiss all four lawsuits, saying they are the work of disgruntled former employees making false accusations.
WHISTLE-BLOWER SUITS
Kaplan, said Rosen, its chairman, is a model of higher education for the future, helping working adults – especially low-income and minority students – improve their lives.
But many current and former Kaplan employees and students said in interviews that they believed the company was concerned most with getting students’ financial aid and that Kaplan’s fast-growing revenues were based on recruiting students whose chances of succeeding were low.
They cite, for example, a training manual used by recruiters in Pittsburgh whose “profile” of Kaplan students listed markers like low self-esteem, reliance on public assistance, being fired, laid off, incarcerated, or physically or mentally abused.
Melissa Mack, a Kaplan spokeswoman, said the manual had not been used since 2006.
Admissions advisers, past and present, say the pressure to recruit students leads to aggressive, and sometimes misleading, sales tactics.
Carlos Urquilla-Diaz, a former Kaplan instructor and administrator who is one of the Miami whistle-blowers, recalled a PowerPoint presentation showing black women who were raising two children by themselves as the company’s primary target.
Such women, Urquilla-Diaz said, were considered most likely to drop out before completing the program, leaving Kaplan with the aid money and no need to provide more services.
Victoria Gatsiopoulos, a former instructor and director of career services at a Kaplan College in Pittsburgh, said in her complaint that the school made promises to students of “how their lives will magically change” if they attended Kaplan classes.
She also charges that Kaplan would raise instructors’ grades for students so they remained eligible for federal aid. Former Kaplan instructors not involved in the litigation made similar claims.
Kaplan officials said they had seen no evidence of manipulated grades, inflated placement reports or unrealistic job promises. But dozens of former students said they felt misled.
The broadest complaint against Kaplan is the one from Florida, in which the former dean of paralegal studies, Ben Wilcox, is one of three plaintiffs.
Kaplan officials say there is reason to distrust all three plaintiffs.
Wilcox is under indictment on charges of hacking into Kaplan’s computer system and sending out harassing e-mails.
“They’ll tell you all sorts of terrible things about me,” Wilcox said, adding that Kaplan is intent on discrediting him because of his access to incriminating evidence.
The other two plaintiffs, Urquilla-Diaz and Jude Gillespie, have both brought unsuccessful discrimination complaints against Kaplan.
Graham and Rosen emphasize that Kaplan has made important changes, including its new “Kaplan Commitment,” which allows students to enrol, risk free, for several weeks – thereby eliminating any incentive to recruit unqualified students.
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