What Stanley Kaplan Wrought
Stanley Kaplan who died on Sunday at the age of 90 came of age during The Great Depression and sought entry to medical school at a time when minorities were subject to stringent quotas.
Although he graduated second in his class at City College in New York City and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa he felt his religion and his affiliation with a public school worked against him. He wrote, “I had a double whammy against me.” The experience made him an advocate of test preparation.
More than that, some would say the late Mr. Kaplan was a visionary and an entrepreneur. He certainly spawned a crowd of competitors, The Princeton Review and even his former opponent The College Board among them.
Still Mr. Kaplan’s lasting legacy may not be his family or his philanthropy. He may well have planted the seeds of the salvation of the newspaper industry. As Karen W. Arenson reported in The New York Times, “Today, Kaplan is a diversified education company with than a quarter-billion dollars in revenues and is the Post Company’s largest business.”
Other newspapers have followed suit. In Britain, The Daily Mail and General Trust, the tabloid conglomerate, last year brought in 18% of its revenue from its information subsidiary.In 2008 it acquired subidiaries through its Hobson’s division that are familiar to anyone who has filed a college application recently—Naviance, College Confidential and AY Recruiting, which processes the Common Application and provides recruiting services for many schools, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation among them. They have a subsidiary scouting for such opportunities.
Just as Mr. Kaplan found a niche in the lucrative world of for profit test preparation, newspapers have profited from it. And it is possible other imitators may not be far behind.
Tags: entrepreneurship, New York Times, newspapers, small business, test preparation, Washington Post
On the Anniversary of a Lay Off
Commemorating an anniversary seems an appropriate way to inaugurate a new blog. July 29 is the day I was laid off from one of the nation’s leading department stores.
As anyone who has been laid off knows, it is a painful experience. In my case I had helped train the personnel manager who fired me when several years earlier, recently divorced, she arrived at the store to begin her retailing career on the selling floor.
Although mentoring someone 17 years older was a stretch, as an entry level operations manager I persevered, even as she jumped the promotion line ahead of the rest of us 20 somethings into middle management. Clearly we were never on the same track.
Just as I had discharged my obligation to train her, she discharged hers in dismissing me. Her parting was a direct, “You’re just not……(fill in the name of the store here.) And perhaps it was true, from her perspective. As the freelance journalist that I later became, I learned there are many sides to a story.
It took some time to find my footing first. Unemployment and its partner, battered self-esteem, seemed like near constant companions along with a newly found passion in personal finance to preserve a small nest egg and stretch unemployment insurance benefits.
The period of unemployment set in motion an abiding interest in careers and management and one of the mainstays of my journalistic portfolio—personality profiles of senior management. I continue to grapple with the idea that a dismissal was “strictly business.” In all business transactions there is always a personal relationship, chemistry or the lack of it, that greases our interactions.
In the coming months, as companies stop shedding jobs and the nation regains its collective footing, this blog will answer questions about careers in the post Great Recession economy. Feel free to add your thoughts to the conversation. We’ll offer tips and suggestions, reporting and insights so you can better understand your career and the individuals—your colleagues, your managers, your subordinates, your customers—who influence and in some instances hold sway over it.
Today’s question—How did you negotiate a company leave taking? What would you do differently now if you had the chance?
Tags: Careers, layoff, mentoring, unemployment
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