I really liked this podcast interview with Melissa Mack about her long tenure at Kaplan and that firm’s growth from a somewhat unprofitable test prep firm to a multi billion dollar education company.
Obviously Kaplan does a lot more than test prep now, but they do come up now and then in some of the test prep communities I participate in (mostly GRE-related) and they did recently purchase the Barron’s brand name (along with their author contracts).
Regular readers might remember my fixation on 1950s and 60s era Kaplan. Using the Internet archive and Google Maps I sought out the exact locations of the original Kaplan Centers. I’ve updated my blog post on that topic a few times since originally publishing it.