Well we got no class, and we got no principles

A story in The NYTimes just coudn't go by without some commentary:

Troubles Grow for a University Built on Profits

The University of Phoenix became the nation’s largest private university by delivering high profits to investors and a solid, albeit low-overhead, education to midcareer workers seeking college degrees.

But its reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.

Let's be frank here, you can't see your academic quality "eroded" when it is rather unclear how well you stood within the academy to start with. They aren't ranked by the leading suspects like US News and World Report, and while many of their programs are accredited, several, including the MBA program, are not. In the article in question, the only quote defending the academic quality at UoP comes from their president:

In the interview, Dr. Pepicello shrugged off the bad news. Many top corporations still pay for employees to attend the university, he said, and the exodus of top officials has resulted from a healthy search for new directions. “We are reinventing ourselves,” Dr. Pepicello said.

That's not much of a stirring defense, but it's all you'll find.

Simply put, I doubt anyone has a decent sense of what the academic quality there was then or is now. No outside source was quoted in the article speaking up for the university at all with regard to either past or present. Several students were called upon to provide anecdotes, always a useful source of conclusive information, but all we really learn from them is that one professor hired by UoP seems to be "Doctoring" his CV by including a PhD that he never earned.

From the article, it is hard to conclude that the school has really changed all that much. It is an inexpensive option for working adults to get a college degree, which naturally has a low graduation rate because very few students will finish up within the required six-year timeframe if they finish at all. The quality is like what you'd expect from a distributed commuter/online University: highly inconsistent, with little way to really enforce standards. It is what it is, but I'm not sure if this story really did anyone justice.