Kaplan Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan full-time for more than a year

Pros – cant think of any thing

Cons – Very immature, unprofessional managers that have no problem lying to customers and employees to cover their own inadequate performances. As an employee, be prepare to be a scapegoat for anything that could possibly be attributed to you whether it is part of your job or not. The processes and systems (or lack thereof) made it impossible to do ones job effectively.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – The instructors are highly qualified and really enjoy helping students achieve their goals. Many of the staff and instructors work hard to build quality programs

Cons – Management has no idea how to manage or lead. Accolades are given based on personal friendships, not measurable, qualitative abilities. Students are given full rein of the campus. There is no support for faulty or staff. The workplace environment is extremely toxic, to the point where staff and instructors have fallen ill.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire individuals with integrity and ethics. Hire individuals with teaching experience (college-level) in non-for profit education. Hire individuals who are experienced in a college setting as a provost or academic advisor (again, other than for-profits) Hire individuals who have extensive experience working with disadvantaged, minority and other challenging groups. Hire individuals who know the difference between management and delegation. Hire individuals who have a multicultural background, showing proven leadership and accountability.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – very little oversight and a lot of freedom

Cons – No room for advancement
HR is very uncooperative

Advice to Senior Management – Keep the employees informed. Their fears a probably worse than the truth. Everyone is looking for a new position.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – Kaplan contains some of the hardest working individuals I have ever worked with (everyone works a minimum of 9 hours a day - they only pay you for 8 though).

The new office space (395 Hudson Street) is nice and has a newly renovated cafeteria.

Corporate is trying to create inter-division unity by hosting events (trivia, small weekly parties, etc) that are actually fun.

Since Kaplan is part of the Washington Post Company there are some nice perks.

Cons – Even though everyone works a minimum of 9 hours a day and pours their heart and soul in to their job, morale is low because senior management hardly ever acknowledges their employees' accomplishments. You are expected to churn out massive amounts of work like a robot.

When promotions do happen, they are not based on hard work or accomplishments due to the fact that there is rampant favoritism. If you're good at schmoozing senior management and enjoy listening to yourself speak in meetings, but actually don't know a whole lot about how to innovate/market, Kaplan will be a great fit for you.

Raises are non-existent at Kaplan (even yearly cost of living raises). My salary was significantly lower than industry average.

VERY HIGH turnover rate (not surprising).

A word to the wise: stay far away from Kaplan because their business plan is leading them down a dangerous path. Part of the reason I left is because I don't agree with their new business model. I'm predicting that their new initiatives will result in layoffs in early 2012.

Advice to Senior Management – You need to seriously re-think your business plan and evaluate who your customers are and how they use your product. Sales figures don't lie and show you exactly what consumers want...stop blatantly ignoring them.

Stop diverting resources away from your core product line (which coincidentally brings in the bulk of your revenue) to ancillary ones that are free/aren't valuable to the consumer. Take the blinders off and realize this is not a viable business plan.

Do something/anything to improve morale. Recognize accomplishments of everyone, not just a select few who enjoy hearing themselves speak in meetings/take credit for what others have done.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Kaplan

Pros – It is a recognizable name/ brand, since they advertise so much everywhere.

Cons – Would give me projects that were impossible to complete. Didn't listen to my objections/ attempts to explain why more time was needed. Got incredibly burnt out then left.

Advice to Senior Management – If you need a new product developer every year then that says something about your department

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – One of the best things about working at Kaplan is the location. You're right around Columbus Circle near the edge of Central Park. It's very beautiful in the warmer months. You know there is a problem when this rates as one of the BEST reasons to work at an employer.

Cons – This place will suck the life out of you. As a "System Engineer" you will do weekly code pushes for the development along with putting out fires. They call it System Engineering, but really its more like Operations. It's the most mind-numbing work I've ever had.

The management there is shady. During the tech downturn in the early 2000s they increased the work hours from 9-5 to 9-7. I guess they figured that if you didn't like it, you would leave on your own and they wouldn't have to give you any severance pay. The hours were scaled back to 9-6 about 8 months later and remain there.

The environment is a joke. It is full of decaying hardware and software. Many "Mission Critical" applications are on Solaris 2.5.1. I recently had to build a copy of one of these machines and found it funny that I was applying Y2K patches in 2006. Other than the Solaris 2.5.1 machines you have mostly a Linux environment where fires are a daily thing. You can easily spend 3 days a week doing nothing but putting out fires. No one has any time to re-architect the environment so that the fires don't happen in the first place.

Advice to Senior Management – The developers working in the other building in NYC (around the Times Square area) seem to be a lot happier than the engineering team at Columbus Circle. I would suggest to evaluate what is going right for the developers and applying it to the engineers. This is assuming that you don't think McDonalds-like turnover is a bad thing in your IT department.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Kaplan

Pros – The one great thing about working at Kaplan is that once you've proven yourself in one role, they're willing to take a chance and let you do a job that you're not necessarily qualified for. It's a double-edged sword in that you'll never be paid what you're worth externally

Cons – poor communication. It's not the case that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, it's that the left hand doesn't know that there's a right hand. poor infrastructure (technology and processes). less than stellar salary.

Advice to Senior Management – 1. bite the bullet and invest in technology.
2. take a serious look at the campus marketing approach. throwing employees on college campuses and pestering undergrads to sign lead cards is not the most efficient approach out there

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – Kaplan is a great place for someone to build a resume and learn what it takes to run a business from management to operations to marketing to sales. Plus you are helping students, many of whom you can relate to, achieve their educational and career goals (or so says the mission statement.)

Cons – You will be paid squat - i have friends who work less hours than I do (60+) and make twice as much (at least.) They promise huge bonuses that are impossible to achieve, but its the typical stick and carrot show. Management changes its mind on a daily basis. They seem to have no idea what it is they are truly wanting to do. Many of their judgements are based upon emotional reactions instead of solid decision making. Most decisions are based upon a budget that is poorly created and funded. Growth is expected to be over 10% YOY while the budget is cut 20% YOY. there is very little support from the home office and all the operation process and systems are a joke. They make work harder to do than it needs to be. I'm not adverse to hard work, but you shouldn't have to work so hard to actually just do your job!

Advice to Senior Management – I was senior management and no one would listen anyway!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Kaplan

Pros – The students are usually great, and the product (courses) are actually quite good and in some respects easy to deliver (very scripted)

Cons – Disorganized. Buggy technology. No benefits and you don't really get paid hourly what it seems you will, because you only get paid well for teaching and there are a lot of hours outside of teaching. I worked there for years with no benefits and no path to make a career of it, although I did my job well and expressed interest in doing so. Your pay rate is based on student feedback with impossibly high standards and very little support to figure out how to get better feedback. Then if for some reason your ratings slip, you get a demotion. Everything is very convenient for the management.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop nickel and diming and invest in quality faculty... take care of them and they will take care of you. They ARE the product. I had a good impression of the company when I first started and now I have a very bad taste in my mouth about it, and am looking forward to quitting even though I enjoy the actual work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Kaplan

Pros – If you are interested in working in the education industry, Kaplan has a diverse portfolio of different businesses. As a result, there is substantial opportunity for exposure to multiple for-profit education business models

Cons – Kaplan's status as a for profit education company leads it to seek out revenue at the expense of students' learning. Employees are of a generally low intellect and caliber and are not happy to be employed at Kaplan. Those on the "pure" education side are generally unhappy to be working at a for profit, while those on the business side generally wish they were working in a higher caliber organization.

Advice to Senior Management – Put the students first. Once you've done that, start thinking about how you can motivate your employees and foster trust amongst different functions, from sales to marketing to academics.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend