The Growth of Kaplan University

The Miami Herald recently published a story on Kaplan University which has a support center in Fort Lauderdale Florida. The support center and the rest of the company has been growing fast. Its internet-based school now has 21,000 students. In 2001 it had only 264. In less than 5 years Kaplan has become one of the nation's largest online colleges.

The Miami Herald article didn't have any negative issues regarding Kaplan which has been able to avoid problems seen at other institutions. It mentioned that Kaplan's competitor, The University of Phoenix, had been fined $9.8 million by the US Department of Eduction last year over student-recruitment practices. University of Phoenix is the largest online instituion with over 140,000 students. The article also reported Kaplan University has been able to avoid the diploma mill reputation that many for-profit institutions have acquired.

The tuition at Kaplan is $280 per credit hour for its undergraduate programs. In my opinion, this is still way too high for an online school. The technology should allow for much lower costs. However, there are things that can't be improved with technology. I found this quote in the article insightful:

... education is ultimately about relationships and, in particular, the relationship between teacher and student. You can't automate that.

It looks like Kaplan is on the right track and hopefully Kaplan and its competitors will make education more accessible and inexpensive.