Kaplan Higher Ed and the education of The Washington Post Co.

[n2doc]

By Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang, Saturday, April 9, 9:20 PM
Eleven years ago, one of Washington’s most tradition-bound companies placed a bet that would transform its fortunes.

The wager, by The Washington Post Co. and its Kaplan division, took the form of a $165 million purchase of an Atlanta-based chain of for-profit vocational schools that catered to low-income students.

The bet was big — the price equal to the profits earned that year by The Post Co.’s print-media pillars: this newspaper and Newsweek magazine.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-trials-of-kaplan-higher-ed-and-the-education-of-the-washington-post-co/2011/03/20/AFsGuUAD_story.html

I found this part telling:

Along the way, The Post Co.’s reliance on federal student loan money grew. By the end of 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.

[leveymg]

1. NYT is in the privatized "education solutions" as well. And we wonder why "liberal" media seems to

support school privatization. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=291619

The New York Times Media Group comprises the New York Times, a daily and Sunday newspaper; the International Herald Tribune, a daily newspaper; NYTimes.com; the New York Times Index, which produces and licenses the New York Times Index, a print publication; Digital Archive Distribution business that licenses electronic archive databases; and the New York Times News Services Division, which transmits articles, graphics, and photographs from The Times, the Globe, and other publications to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, as well as owns interest in Epsilen, LLC, a hosted online education solution.