First, I would like for everyone to look at this comic … a little off the topic today, but funny none the less.
Now for the big news of the day in distance education: The Apollo Group Ordered to Pay $280 Million
Apollo Group Inc., the for-profit company that owns the University of Phoenix, fraudulently misled investors about its student recruitment policies, a federal jury ruled Wednesday, and was ordered to pay shareholders about $280 million.
[…]
The report, which was issued on Feb. 5, 2004, concluded that the University of Phoenix paid enrollment counselors "solely based on (the) recruiters' success in securing enrollments," which violated federal regulations. It added that the university systematically keeps its incentive-based recruitment practices hidden from the Department of Education. [SOURCE...]
This could be devastating to the school. If they were supporting and carrying out illegal practices for the sake of revenue, I am very upset that this happened. Not so much for the University of Phoenix, but for the industry as a whole.
There are good schools out there that are making an effort to do the right thing. People like myself and all the other bloggers and staff at eLearners work on a daily basis to promote online education. What this does (in an indirect way) is slap us in the face. It also tarnishes the image of the industry and the schools out there that try to uphold standards and keep the process rigorous. 
I didn’t want to use the term “diploma mill” in this post, but what is a person to think that doesn’t know any better? They were letting anyone in that met absolute minimum requirements for the sake of gaining revenue. There is a distinct difference between “for-profit” and fraud.
The only thing I can hope is that they have cleaned up their act. If there is one thing this industry doesn’t need is for it’s most populous (and most well-known) institution to have a black eye like this.
The thing is that all of these problems were preventable. How? Stay above-board and honest. Don’t get greedy. Do the right thing in the interest of the students. It is apparent that the school (by practicing this behavior) saw a bottomless pit of cash in Washington, DC and took full advantage of it. It’s sad to me that an institute of higher learning would do this.
Apollo’s lawyers argued against the accusations on several levels, but I have faith in our justice system and believe the right call was made.
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About WheelCipher
Scott is a manager for a large media, communications, and Internet company in Austin, Texas. He's been in that position since June 2001. He has experience in the high-technology industry in management, engineering, and support positions with Dell Computer Corporation, UUNET Technologies, Wayport and others.
Scott started his degree program in 2003, and had no prior college credit before jumping into the distance learning environment. He graduated in October 2007 having attained an A.A.S. in Information Technology and a B.S. in Management from Kaplan University.
He is now a MBA student at Norwich University
Scott maintains his own blog at ScottDavis.info where he talks about business, education, politics, technology and society.