Brightwood College
defunct system of for-profit colleges in the United States
Brightwood College, formerly Kaplan College, was a system of for-profit colleges in the United States, owned and operated by Education Corporation of America. Main qualifications offered included health, business, criminal justice, information technology, nursing and professional training (trades) programs.
On December 5, 2018, Brightwood's parent company, Education Corporation of America, announced unexpectedly via an email that all of its schools would be closing in two business days. Staff were terminated without legally required notice.
History
Before being acquired by Education Corporation of America (ECA) in September 2015, Kaplan College was part of Kaplan Higher Education, a subsidiary of Kaplan, Inc.
Kaplan, Inc., purchased the American Institute of Commerce, a business training school founded in 1937, and renamed it Kaplan College in 2000, later renaming it to Kaplan University in 2004.
In 2000, Kaplan acquired Quest Education Corporation, which served 30 schools in 11 states. Quest Education Corporation was renamed Kaplan Higher Education in 2002.
In April 2004, Kaplan Higher Education owned 64 campuses, including Hesser College in New Hampshire, and CEI College in California.
California locations operated under the Maric College brand from 2004-2008, then as Kaplan College.
“Brightwood College” enters the record as defunct system of for-profit colleges in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brightwood, College and defunct can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6366812. Authority coordinates are 26.204, -80.165. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2015, 1937 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brightwood College” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.