Kaplan Suspends Enrollment at 2 Campuses !!!

The Washington Post Company’s Kaplan Inc.
unit suspended enrollment on Friday at its campuses in Pembroke Pines,
Fla., and Riverside, Calif., where undercover investigators for the Government Accountability Office found deceptive practices by admissions officials.

At a Senate hearing on Wednesday on recruitment at for-profit colleges, a G.A.O. report, accompanied by videos, described deceptive or
fraudulent practices at each of 15 campuses visited, two of which were
Kaplan campuses. At Kaplan College in Pembroke Pines, for example, an
admissions officer told investigators posing as applicants that the
college had the same accreditation as Harvard.

Washington Post stock fell $31.05, or 7.6 percent, to close at $377.56 on Friday, its largest drop in more than a year, after the company said
in its quarterly report that proposed United States Department of Education
rules could have a “material adverse effect” on Kaplan’s
higher-education operations. The higher-education unit’s $212 million
operating income for the first half of the year made up almost 80
percent of the company’s overall operating income for the period.

The Education Department’s proposed rules would tighten regulation of for-profit colleges’ recruiters and rein in programs whose graduates end
up with more debt than they can repay.

Melissa Mack, a Kaplan spokeswoman, said the company suspended enrollment at the two campuses pending an investigation of the G.A.O.
findings, and meanwhile was working “to ensure that such incidents are
not repeated anywhere at our 75 campuses or among our 16,000
higher-education employees.”

Kaplan’s higher-education programs enrolled more than 112,000 students as of June 30.