conglomerate entered the education market. It acquired the textbook publisher Longman in 1968.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pearson plc divested further from a number of its industries and acquired more educational publishing companies, and its education publishing operations became steadily larger and more significant. In 1988, Pearson plc purchased Addison-Wesley, the sixth-largest publisher of textbooks in the U.S., and merged it with Pearson's educational books