Such misinformation (or at least, in some cases, partially accurate, but misleadingly presented information) in this answer. It's appalling.
First of all, Mark, reputable colleges and universities advertise all the time. Granted, it's true that the lion's share of college/university advertising is by private, for-profit schools (and what's wrong with such schools as that, I'll cover momentarily), but even many of THOSE are perfectly fine. It's just categorically to suggest that the fact that a school advertises is evidence of its being sub-standard.
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with online schools. They're absolutely NOT, categorically, considered "teir 3" (whatever that even means) schools; nor are they categorically "horrible." If they were, then how to you explain the online programs of both Harvard and Yale? Or Oxford or Cambridge?
And, PE2008, you and I have tangled both publicly and privately about this and other subjects; and neither your repeating the kinds of things that you wrote here, nor your wishing, will suddenlly make them any more true than they weren't before. While it IS true that resumes with University of Phoenix (UOP) on them have been known to be tossed in the trash by (ignorant) HR managers, it's not by any stretch of the imagination the norm. Nor are those with psych masters from University of Phoenix particularly more likely to end-up at the likes of Taco Bell than are psych masters degree holders from anyplace else. There are licensed MFT's and LCSW's in many states who have UOP degrees.
Claire M's is the most reasonable response at this writing; and even that contains an implication that there's something inherntly better about "brick and mortar" schools than online (or other distance learning modality) schools. A June 2009 US Department of Education (USDE) study revealed what those of us close to the world of distance learning have always known, to wit: That those pursuing distance learning (of which "online" is a modality) degrees tend to be more disciplined, harder working, and tend to do better, generally, than their in-classroom counterparts.
And what answerer "s l" was told is categorically inaccurate.
UOP is "regionally" accredited by one or more agencies approved by the USDE and the USDE-sanctoned Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). That's the very same kind of accreditation which Harvard and Yale have. That said, accreditation is a measure of MINIMUM standards, not maximal/optimal ones. Even local community colleges have "regional" accreditation, like Harvard and Yale, and no one would dare compare any local community college to either of those institutions. Accreditation merely ensures that there's a quality threshold beneath which the accredited school is guaranteed not to have descended.
UOP, sadly, has a checkered past... as Claire M correctly states. It has cheated students over time, as well as has it failed to detect with its own employees were helping them cheat (and so it was indirectly cheating the public). In my own consulting work, I've redirected people away from UOP because of its checkered past, and when they entered such as one of the California State University programs of similar type as they were enrolled at UOP, they've reported that the work at UOP was outrageously easy, by comparison. So, there's no question that UOP tends to take shortcuts and just churn-out as many graduates as it can...
...and charging them as much as they can, to boot! As Claire M correctly pointed out, public broadcasting has targeted UOP (among other egregious for-profit schools) for its outrageous practices, unreasonably high tuition rates, misleading of students, and other similarly bad things.
SEE:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/ People with UOP credentials are doing welll in life all over the place. That said, there really are at least a few HR managers who so dislike it that they will summarily dismiss a candidate with a UOP degree. They're wrong to do so, of course, but it happens... though not nearly as often as at least some people seem to like to say.
The bottom line is that if you have a choice, you should probably avoid UOP... for all the reasons that I've herein cited. Beyond that, be careful whose opinion around here you both seek and trust.
Hope that helps!