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Part of the problem right now is that online education has such a bad rap - for example, The University of Phoenix is widely recognized as a degree mill. It remains to be seen whether companies/institutions (like Udacity) can get the certification part good enough that it will be worth something.

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UoP's bad rep comes not because they're a degree mill but because they have a high dropout rate (which is sort of the opposite problem -- if they were a degree mill their dropout rate would be low).

Their problem is really that they spent many years recruiting unqualified students who used financial aid to attend, telling them things like "it's no problem to take on $100,000 in debt, with a degree you'll easily be able to get a job that pays $100K." Then the student drops out after four semesters and defaults on their loans, leaving the taxpayer holding the bag.

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