Profitabilty and credibility of on-line education

According to the article E-learn and earn in the June 24, 2002 issue of U.S. News & World Report, stocks of on-line education companies "up an average of 14.5 percent this year." The University of Phoenix Online is featured prominently.

While the article is mostly about profitability and business models, it includes an interesting statistic in regards to the validity of on-line degrees in some circles. The article states that "a poll of human resource managers found that 77 percent thought online degrees from offline institutions were more credible than those from pure E-learning firms." No source for the poll was given.