User:Vicky L. Phillips

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

Vicky Phillips,an education analyst and national thought leader in the area of distance education, designed and directed America’s first online counseling center for adult distance learners for the Electronic University Network on America Online (1989). In 1996, she launched GetEducated.com (SM), a website dedicated to rating and ranking online college programs in an effort to help consumers get educated about quality collegiate elearning while simultaneously avoiding online diploma mills. GetEducated.com is the only Internet education portal that takes neither advertising nor listings from unaccredited or bogus colleges while independently rating and ranking online degree programs on consumer dimensions such as cost and quality. GetEducated.com has been lauded by Newsweek's consumer Tip Sheet as "a great source for weeding out phonies (among online degrees)," (April 2005),and cited by CNNMoney as most trusted site on the Internet for accuarte information on accredited online college options. Vicky, who entered the professional world of distance learning in the early 1980s as Director of Academic Services and adjunct faculty for Antioch University's innovative San Francisco experiential degree center, has spearheaded the development of a number of consumer tools that are available free online in an effort to help a new generation of elearners understand and select the best online education programs fot their personal and career needs. Her free tool, The Diploma Mill Police (SM), available from GetEducated.com, is an online database that archives vital information on the accreditation status of online universities in the USA and warns consumers of the more than 200 degree mills and the consumer actions pending against them across the United States. Vicky is the author of more than 100 articles on distance learning, which appear in publications ranging from Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia to the cultural magazine Salon, to the American Management Association's Handbook on ELearning, a practitioner's guide. She is also the author of a range of directories and consumer handbooks on the online college experience, including Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools, Best Distance Learning Undergraduate Schools, and Never Too Late to Learn: An Adult Student's Guide to College. Her research findings on college-level distance learning have been cited in Money Magazine, Bankrate.com, Time, Forbes, Fortune, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, CNN, Training & Development, Nation's Business, ELearning Magazine, Human Resources Magazine, and Home Office Computing.