Online college evaluation tool to be unveiled today - al.com

Online college evaluation tool to be unveiled today - al.com: "Since opening in 1993, Columbia Southern has gone from an enrollment of a dozen mail correspondence students to 16,700 online, with students living as close as Gulf Shores and as far away as Kenya and Vietnam.

It is a local success story in the for-profit education arena, which sometimes draws the ire of higher education officials who warn of 'diploma mills,' fraudulent, fly-by-night operations that profit by offering unaccredited academic degrees.

Columbia Southern University went online in 2001, the same year it became accredited by the U.S. Department of Education's Distance Education and Training Council. The Orange Beach school has been one of the institutions most involved in trying to meet and maintain high standards, said Bradley Byrne, chancellor of Alabama's two-year college system."