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Dangers of Online Universities

What They Offer

Universities like the above pay millions to put sponsored ads on TV and pages like this one. They offer a program where you can work from home with minimal time and online assignments to get a a degree in many fields. The price is usually ridiculously high.

Why Not To Trust Them

Online universities such as AIU Online, while not flat out scams, and just businesses, rather than schools. They make all their courses once and reuse them year to year with the 30,000$ a year they charge going to profit. They are a stock holding organization, meaning, the stock holders can shut it down if it's revenues aren't adding up, and their key focus is pleasing stock holders, rather than education. So if you receive a call saying your a good candidate for this or that online university, think of them as telemarketers, rather than people who care.

Lets say I'm a Company

You come in and say you got an online degree. I'll already be skeptical about your skills. It's very easy to cheat in these types of courses and it does not take the discipline that students at a normal university have received to complete a completely online education. Say the stock holders no longer care about the company because new, cheap competition has moved in and taken profits. Your degree is worthless. The company does a check on your school and they no longer exist.

Say an Online University is Hacked

I'm a webmasters so I know how to capture, video, flash, and all kinds of media they put in front of me, even with the crummy javascript frames AIU uses for protection. I join the school, steal all the lectures and courses, and I annonymously post it into a peer to peer download site like emule. News gets out that the 30,000$ online course is floating around the internet and your education is worth a few pennies because just about anyone could have taken the same course.

How can I tell?

Are they owned by a stock holding company?
Check who they're accredited by.
Are they overly eager and encouraging for you to sign up?
How does their website look?
Only high school diploma required.
Ridiculous prices.


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Page Generated on: Wednesday, May 25th 2005
Last Modified on: Monday, February 13th 2006