Maybe YOU guys know something. I don't think so.

[Randall Flagg]

Their business degree is an M.B.A. Lite,” said Henry M. Levin, a professor of higher education at Teachers College at Columbia University. “I’ve looked at their course materials. It’s a very low level of instruction.”

In November, the university’s reliance on part-time faculty caused a problem with Intel, hundreds of whose employees it has educated. Alan Fisher, an Intel manager, said the company had decided to pay for employees to attend only highly accredited programs. Although Phoenix is regionally accredited, it lacks approval from the most prestigious accrediting agency for business schools, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

John J. Fernandes, the association’s president, said the university had never applied. “They’re smart enough to understand their chances of approval would be low,” Mr. Fernandes said. “They have a lot of come-and-go faculty. We like institutions where the faculty is stable and can ensure that students are being educated by somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Dr. Pepicello defended the effectiveness of the faculty, saying instructors were carefully certified.

Most educators acknowledge that the university has helped traditional institutions recognize the needs of older students.

Some of the university’s detractors suggest that it has always relied too much on part-time faculty and raced too quickly through course material. Others say the university’s academic program was once better but has deteriorated in breakneck expansion — it has opened 50 campuses in a decade. Today, even a cursory Internet search will turn up criticism on sites like ripoffreport.com and uopexperience.com.

“Phoenix claims that 95 percent of their students are satisfied, but the reports we get indicate otherwise,” said James R. Hood, founder of a similar site, consumeraffairs.com.

Many reports follow a similar pattern. Students say they liked recruiters’ descriptions of the classes, but after enrolling concluded that they were learning too little or paying too much. Many who quit say they were left with huge debts.

Robert Wancha, 42, a former National Guard commander who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in information technology at the university’s Detroit campus, said that in a computer course last fall his instructor, Christopher G. Stanglewicz, had boasted that he had a doctorate but did little teaching, instead assigning students to work in learning teams while he toyed with his computer.

Mr. Stanglewicz, reached at his home, acknowledged that he had covered only a fraction of the syllabus , partly, he said, because the university required him to cram too much information into too few sessions.

“Students get overwhelmed,” he said. Mr. Stanglewicz asserted in the interview that he had earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Kentucky. But the authorities there said his name was not in their records. (Dr. Pepicello said that Mr. Stanglewicz had never told the university that he had a doctorate, and that he was qualified to teach.)

Not all students are critics. Yvonne-Louise Catino, 43, of Bloomington, Minn., who is studying online for a doctorate, said she believed she was getting a rigorous education. In a week, Ms. Catino said, she might read eight journal articles and write several essays. “I love the online environment,” she said, “being able to direct where I want to go.”

One can expect that there are levels of schools and it apears that some are substandard al do accredited. This is my opinion I can be wrong.

You are exactly correct. Some accredited schools are great, some are good, some are fair, some are average, some are below average, some are bad-like UOP and the Easy Three, and others are so bad they are only allowed to stay because they can pay the accreditors the money.

And Di and DD are wrong because they refuse to admit that there are accredited schools too bad to safely use, and there are unaccredited schools good enough to use. But to each his own I say. If a bad RA school is what they want I have no problem with that, if, they don't do as Rich Douglas does, and brags about easy it was and then says but it was so wonderful. The boy got 4 degrees in 21 months, did it by testing out, and learned very little. On paper he looks to be educated, in reality, he ain't. And he proves it every time he opens his mouth to brag about a bad school. Harvard is accredited as is UOP, but only a fool fails to see the huge differences between them.

UOP is an accredited degree mill, nothing more. Excelsior, Charter Oak, TESC, are a little better but of almost no use where good B&M degrees are expected, teaching and such.

You can't do one of the quicky accredited degrees in 8 weeks and then fool people into believing that it is the same thing as sitting in class for 4 years. It isn't and almost everyone in the world knows it, except, those who did it that way. They feel the need to shill and lie to defend their lesser choices. They then also attack people with state licensed degrees because they really fear their own degrees which were often much easier and quicker will not be seen as any better. UOP was never as good as was CCU when it was state approved or now even, of course.