Founded | 2007 |
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Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | Boston |
Key people |
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Publication types | Educational content, technology, and services |
Imprints |
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Revenue | US$1.71 billion (2015) |
Owner(s) | Apax Partners, Searchlight Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Oaktree Capital Management, Oak Hill Advisors, BlackRock Financial Management, Franklin Mutual Advisers, and others |
No. of employees | 5,500 (2014) |
Official website | www |
Cengage Learning, Inc. is an educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets worldwide. Cengage Learning has operations in more than 20 countries around the world.
The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and has approximately 5,500 employees worldwide across 20 countries. It was headquartered at its Stamford, Connecticut, office until April 2014.
Gale is Cengage Learning's library reference arm and specializes in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The company creates and maintains databases that are published online, in print, as e-books and in microform.
Cengage Learning offers print and digital textbooks, instructor supplements, online reference databases, distance learning courses, test preparation materials, corporate training courses, career assessment tools, materials for specific academic disciplines, and custom solutions.
Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning, which owned the Wadsworth Publishing imprint, was created out of a restructuring of International Thomson Publishing. It was announced on October 25, 2006, that Thomson Learning would be offered for sale by the Thomson Corporation, with an estimated value of up to US$5 billion. The company was bought by a private equity consortium consisting of Apax Partners and OMERS Capital Partners for US$7.75 billion, and the name was changed to Cengage Learning on 24 July 2007. In 2011, Cengage Learning acquired the National Geographic Society's school publishing unit and combined this school business with the Global ELT business to create and launch the National Geographic Learning brand. The global brand combined the former Cengage Learning ELT and National Geographic School Publishing imprints and sub-brands, under one unified identity.
In September 2013 David Shaffer retired from his role of chairman of the company, Shaffer had previously been executive vice president of The Thomson Corporation from 2005 to 2006, and then President and CEO of both Thomson Publishing International and Thomson Learning. The company had acquired a large amount of debt through the course of its initial buyout and subsequent acquisitions, and seen declining revenue through a shrinking market for paper text books. Cengage Learning filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 on July 2, 2013. Cengage Learning emerged from bankruptcy on April 1, 2014, eliminating approximately $4 billion of its funded debt and securing $1.75 billion in exit financing. Post bankruptcy, the company decided to focus on developing digital study guides and other educational supplements, as well as hard-copy text books. In January 2015 they announced expansion of their LearnLaunch Accelerator program, which provides seed funding and intensive coaching to promising startups, to the University of Chihuahua in Mexico.