<p>My husband went both routes and I have to say that the for-profit university was a disaster, not only financially but what they have to offer. First he went to a tech school and got his A+ & MCSE certs which I have to admit helped out for the IT industry but that's it, when the dot.com crash took its toll it was really hard for him to find enough work to take care of our family even though I worked as well. Then he decided to go for his BS at University of Phoenix because of the placement program, but he hated how the classes were set up, there was no library, no real labs, everything had to be in groups and the list goes on. Plus the tuition cost kept taking all of the grant & loan money leaving no money for living expenses. What was worse is that the tuition kept rising & we were getting into heavy debt. I told him that for the price he is paying he could go to USC and talked him in to leaving there and going to a community college & then transferring to a UC. I am so glad he agreed even though he basically had to start over (a few of the credits were transferable to the ccc but not many). We ended up enrolling together in a ccc and received grants and scholarships because of our age and having children.. we then both transferred to Berkeley and love our college experience as adult learners. There were two things that were problems when transferring, first of all his loan balance from those pricey for-profit schools took him to the limit of how much you can borrow (thank god for the grants and scholarships that not only paid for the tuition at Berkeley but also the living expenses). Second, several of the units were transferable from the private college and he went way over the unit cap which almost cost him his acceptance (Again, thank god that the adcom was willing to work w/ him on this). I know some people benefit from those types of schools so my only suggestion is to count the costs because you often do not get what you paid for and if you ever think that you might want to transfer to a public university later on keep in mind the unit caps for most universities.... ok my rant is done for the evening...great thread btw =)</p>