I agree with you to a degree about the for profit universities.

But even public, brick and mortor schools are offering more and more online – My grad school – Penn State, now has 100% online programs.

The issue I have with schools like UoP is that the profit motive seems to outweigh what is good for the student sometimes. They incentivize the admissions staff to line up loans for prospective students… so the staff has no incentive to suggest that a loan might not be in the students best interest… it’s about sales.

That said – there can be decent quality education from these for-profit online schools.

I have a family member who teaches nursing for University of Phoenix. She retired from USD’s nursing program and she enjoys teaching still. They have a decent graduate nursing program. It’s not 100% online, either.

I have another family member who got his business doctorate from UoP. (already had undergrad from UC, and an MBA from back east) He was a road warrier at the time – so online worked for him when he was spending weeks at a time at international job sites. A traditional PhD program would have been impossible with his work demands… but online worked perfectly for him – he had plenty of time in hotels to excel at the course work, work on his dissertation, etc.
Now he teaches for another online, for profit, university.

They are trying to convince me to consider teaching for one of these programs as a part time gig in semi-retirement. I’m considering it – but still have to get past the profit over student’s interest piece that bugs me.