Over 90 of the 100 worst accredited online universities in the world are located in the USA. According to current edition of the BEST WORST ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAM PROVIDERS, this top 100 are members of the bottom 20%. Of all colleges and universities offering online degree programs and rated in this year?s edition have a rating of 1 on a scale of 1 to 5; 5 being the highest rating.  

According to author, Dr. Fred DiUlus who invented the rating protocol 12 years ago, an ambitious and degree hungry student, obsessed with getting a degree from an accredited institution as easily as possible will fish in this sea of accredited schools. However, he is quick to point out that it does not "in any way" guarantee the education provided is worth much. The only thing that matters to the student, he says, under these circumstances, is that their degree is easy to acquire and accredited. Easy, he says, is what academics refer to as a lack of academic rigor, the benchmark definition that defines the very epitome of higher education from the Ivies and military academies on down.

Unfortunately, says DiUlus, students have been lulled to sleep about the value of online education from schools that have been noted for being traditional schools. ?Applicants believe that because a school is known as a traditional school, the body of online degree programs they are offering are of equal merit and get swallowed up in the hype that this spin somehow legitimizes the value of their online degrees.?  A scan of the online faculty quickly reveals the cavernous gulf that exists between full time and adjuncts teaching online. In this respect he goes on ?Online colleges that are totally online and have been doing online programs for years run circles around these half-hearteg attempts to stir the pot of legitimacy on the premise that they somehow are more superior because they have a brick and mortar campus.? In a word, DiUlus says this is a ?Myth?.

DiUlus questions the veracity of any traditional college that somehow has seen the light and now offers online degree programs. Particularly he observes in the last two years when schools were falling over each other to get in the game. If students think it is for their convenience he says they are drawing the wrong conclusion. Schools are responding to the demand of their student but that isn?t the reason that the school who not more than three to five years ago was disgusted at the thought of offering such a program find themselves among an army of schools who have turned the corner on the fear of being left behind. The results find the field littered with hastily thrown together programs, tenured faculty reluctant to teach online and adjuncts replacing them with PhD's in Online Technology teaching courses they are not qualified to teach who may never have taught a class in a traditional college.

How tough is it to get into and graduate from one of these schools? DiUlus says that most of these are on the edge of legitimacy as online education providers. Students have what amounts to a free pass from day one he observes. ?Pay your money, do the time, get your degree. This pretty well sums it up?, he says.  Looking at the list he notes that US NEWS  ranks some of these high in some categories overlooking the ease of which it is to walk off with a degree for minimal work. ?What is such a degree worth on the street?, he says,? is another question.? The bottom line value according to Dr. DiUlus is in the hands of the student. "They are the ultimate final judge, and not the critics and certainly not those of us who may perceive a college degree at a different level and meaning"   

Abraham Lincoln University; Adams State College; Alameda University; Allied American University; American College of Technology; American Inter Continental Univ;        American Military University; American Public University; American Sentinel University   Anaheim University; Ancilla College Online; Antonelli College; Antioch School of Church Planting and Leadership Development; Andrew Jackson University; Apollo unversity; Ashworth College; Aspen University; Atlantic University; Averett University; 

Baptist Bible College; Bethany College; Blue Mountain College; Bluefield College;     Bryant & Stratton College; Breyer State University; 

California Baptist University; 

Fred DiUlus PhD, is the CEO and Dean of Global Academy Online, a US based international online and hybrid university builder. The eBook rating and rannking online colleges and universities first appeared in 2003 and was the first to rate online colleges and university online degree programs. the decade long onging publication earned DiUlus the notoriety as the father of online university ratings and rankings. His five-point metric relies heavily on the qualifications of online faculty, a function copied by subsequent publications in their entry into online school ratings ten years later.