Notice how I said I would accept the fact that you can't 'test out' of this degree. Yes, you did have the 'test out of' in your sentence, but you have basically been belittling distance education as a whole.
http://online.fsu.edu/
http://online.fsu.edu/student/degree...ogram/undergr/
Sorry, you are wrong here. In my experience, schools and employers look at regional accreditation FIRST. After that, they may, in certain instances and for some degrees, look at a specific program accreditation. Also, not every school receives a regional accreditation. I will agree that state-funded institutions do get this accreditation, but that is probably because the state requires it in order for the school to receive funding (that should tell you something there).
I have friends who are in Human Resources and I can tell you that they look at regional accreditation. I also have friends in Engineering and IT. They also look at regional accreditation of a school first and then to any additional accreditations. That has been my experience.
BTW, I am 40 yrs old and am currently employed in the IT field. I've written programs for embedded systems, PCs and PDAs. I mainly write in C++, but I also know Java, Fortran, Cobol and Perl to name a few. I attended college many years ago, but at the time, I was young and impatient. Now, I'm older and still impatient. I know what the job market is like and I know that I can get another job in this field using experience (15+ years as a system programmer). However, I have always wanted to complete a degree and maybe try another field. That is why I am here. Distance education is becoming more widely accepted than you believe. At least, from reading your posts, it seems that you believe that distance education is an impossibility. But for some of us, it is the only option. Time constraints brought on by family and job responsibilities are usually the limiting factors. While I am not going to get an IT degree from Excelsior, I am going to knock out all of my basic courses for a degree using as much distance education as I can.
Some more links for you.
http://online.ucf.edu/programs/ist_bs.html
http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/online/
http://www.wku.edu/cit/
All of the above are ABET accredited.
