it’s perfectly fine if you go to an accredited college.
Check into the university. See if their programs are accredited with other institutions or not. Most of them are not. For example, there is a state university close to me that offers a 2 + 2 program for mechanical engineering technology. This program is not accredited through a national institution so it would be worthless to me if I decided to pursue a professional engineer’s license. I am therefore attending a different college that is accredited for this program.
There are some really good programs online and some really bad programs online. Just like there are some really good schools not online and some really bad ones. It’s not about online vs classroom at all. It’s about the reputation of the college.
* How can I tell if it’s legit? Check their accreditation and their rankings. You can check accreditation at http://www.chea.org/search/ and you can check their rankings at http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college
* What is accredited? Accreditation is a process schools go through to make sure that they meet a certain basic standard. The government doesn’t accredit schools (except in NY) but they recognize (or not) accreditors. In the US, the most important accreditation for a college is called “regional accreditation” – if a school is regionally accredited then their coursework meets a standard that is likely to transfer to other colleges and will be accepted by most employers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation
There are other accreditors though and some are important. If you want a law degree then ABA accreditation is more important than regional. If you want to become a teacher then approval of your state department of education is more important. If you want to be a nurse then it will need to be approved to allow you to sit the NCLEX exam. Each of these depends on particular professional requirements.
If you find the school in the US News rankings – it’s not likely to have any real accreditation problems. It may still have reputation problems though depending on how it’s ranked.
Your options for online education are far more than those “as seen on TV colleges” – I like the search tool at Petersons.com for finding programs. http://www.petersons.com/distancelearning/code/search.asp but don’t forget to also look and see what your local community college and State U are offering online too. Everybody and his brother teaches online these days – including Harvard, Berkeley, and Oxford.
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check for a certification and discuss it with a counselor and maybe even discuss it with other universities. for instance if you are thinking about pheonix university online or baker online, go to the local “top” university and ask them. that way you can get what you need with your money.