Salon.com > University of Phoenix

The online university of spam

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:45:00 +0000

My journey into the sleazy heart of for-profit college Web marketing began with a weird email. It ended with a huge waste of taxpayer money.

The subject header: "Link Removal Request." The sender: "Janelle Goodman," who billed herself as "a representative" of the "compliance team" at an outfit called BachelorsDegreeOnline.

Goodman wanted me to remove a link from my site, which she identified as keilarowski.com/get-almost-any-book-for-free-100-kosher-sites, to her site, BachelorsDegreeOnline.com. She politely informed me that the request was part of a "process" in which BachelorsDegreeOnline was "looking to clean up some of our content and our backlink profile to ensure that we are in full compliance with Google's recently updated Webmaster Guidelines."

"We thank you for your time and are available to answer any questions about this process you may have," wrote Goodman.

Since I had no connection whatsoever to the "keilarowski.com" site and I have never linked to BachelorsDegreeOnline, I wrote back to Goodman and expressed my befuddlement.

University of Phoenix’ plot to corner the cheap education market

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:11:00 +0000

The University of Phoenix played a key role in defeating legislation that would have allowed community colleges in Arizona to offer low-priced bachelor’s degree programs, interviews and state records show.

The for-profit college, which is one of the state’s biggest employers, provided research and political muscle for a multi-year lobbying campaign against “community college baccalaureate degrees” – out of concern that those programs would undercut its business model.

For-profit schools and community colleges generally serve the same working, non-traditional student demographic, but tuition rates at community colleges are often much lower.

Historically, community colleges have offered two-year associate’s degrees, with students then transferring to other schools to earn a bachelor’s degree – also known as a baccalaureate degree. Recent efforts by community colleges to offer their own baccalaureate degree programs have been controversial, in part because they dramatically expand the traditional mission of these schools.