Kaplan University, the Washington Post’s higher-education unit, has been billing students for classes they never took to boost enrollment numbers and secure more federal money, according to a report by the Huffington Post.
Kaplan’s top managers encourage academic advisers to use students’ university account information to enroll them in classes they never intended to take, former advisers told Huffington.
Kaplan has denied involvement in the scheme — dubbed “guerilla registration” — which Huffington reports is corroborated by dozens of student complaints filed in the Florida Attorney General’s Office.
Students have reported they are being tracked down by creditors who say they have outstanding tuition bills for classes they never enrolled in.
“No one in this company has ever been asked, advised or permitted to be an imposter in terms of e-mail messages or student accounts,” Kaplan spokesman Mark Harrad told Huffington. “That’s just not acceptable.”
Kaplan is owned by the publicly traded Washington Post Co. and has become the company’s most lucrative cash cow, generating billions of dollars in revenues a year.
The university’s business model relies heavily on federal student aid — consistent with most other for-profit colleges — and the government rewards more aid to schools with higher enrollment.
Kaplan enrolls 110,000 students, with about 70,000 attending class online, and has 75 campuses nationwide. The school derived 87 percent of its revenue from federal student aid in 2009. According to Department of Education data released in 2009, only 28 percent of Kaplan students repay their student loans.
In 1991, 82 percent of the Washington Post Co.’s revenues came from newspaper, magazine, and local TV broadcasting businesses. In 2009, those divisions accounted for a only quarter of revenues, and Kaplan generated 58 percent of revenues, or $1.5 billion.
According to the Washington Post Co.’s 2010 annual report, “The company is more dependent than ever on a single business: Kaplan.”
Kaplan has recently come under fire by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is suing the university for rejecting job applicants based on credit history, a decision that discriminated by race.
Kaplan also faces an investigation by the Florida attorney general into recruiting practices at for-profit colleges. Kaplan suspended enrollment at two of its campuses after a Government Accountability Office investigation found that recruiters were exaggerating how much applicants could earn from a Kaplan education.
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This article is based in part on wire service reports.
