US education company Kaplan, best known for its preparation courses for standardised tests, is reportedly applying for the right to become Britain’s first for-profit university.

The company will initially want to offer degrees in courses that it already provides within Britain, such as business studies, law and accountancy, the company’s chief executive William Macpherson told the Financial Times.

“Our focus is closely tied to employment outcomes. That gives us a more narrow focus than many universities will have,” he said.

Kaplan, a division of the Washington Post newspaper company, has been running an online university in the United States for several years that offers dozens of degrees.

“Our experience in the US is that we have managed to bring many people into education who wouldn’t otherwise have done so.”

Macpherson told the newspaper that Kaplan was considering the move because of a variety of changes to the British higher education system, including the government’s stated ambition to get half of all young people to attend university, along with increases to tuition fees.

The newspaper said that if Kaplan were successful in its bid to win approval to award degrees in Britain, it would challenge traditional British universities for post-graduate vocational degrees that several state-funded universities rely on as a way to generate cash.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Education. Tags: Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.