Vicky Phillips

Vicky Phillips is the CEO of GetEducated.com, an online consumer advocacy website for distance-education programs. In 2009 she infamously enrolled her dog Chester at Rochville University, which subsequently forwarded her an MBA in the name of her pet.

Vicky Phillips entered the field of distance-learning research in 1989 when there were only three schools in the US offering distance-learning degree programs and has been a leading consumer advocate for students pursuing coursework online since the early 1990s. She started the first American online counseling center for distance learners in 1990 and was the CEO of the Vermont adult education consulting firm Lifelong Learning.

She currently serves as CEO of GetEducated.com, which she founded to provide consumer information on online degree programs and seeks to undermine fradulent online educational organizations, as well as serving as a consulting agency for distance educators. It also serves as a ratings organization for online degree programs. They also distribute free guidebooks on the best accredited online schools and produce surveys on distance-education programs. Phillips is also an expert on online educational fraud, involved in combating online diploma mills and individuals who use false degrees to get ahead in their careers. In 2005 she warned that there were more fake online MBAs in the US market than real ones.

In addition to publishing GetEducated.com, Phillips has been interviewed regarding current events related to online education by news organizations like Fox News Channel, Time Magazine, Wired Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, CBS, and ABC News. She is also the co-author of The Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools: Earning your Degree without Leaving Home and Never Too Late to Learn: The Adult Student's Guide to College, both published by Random House. She has also written essays for publications including CNN.com and Salon.com.

In 2009 Phillips created an experiment to see how lax the rules were regarding who can receive a degree from an online diploma mill. She enrolled her dog, Chester Ludlow, into an MBA program at the online Rochville University, by submitting a fake resume and a check for $499. Within three weeks the university sent a degree certificate and two sets of transcripts to Phillips in the dog's name. The official graduation GPA for the dog was a 3.19. Phillips stated that in response to the experiment, she has "had to deal with a lot of blowback, including personal threats" from the university involved. Part of those attacks included two blog-sites assembled to decry Phillips and her business as harmful to students and having biased rankings. The sites were described as "laughably bad and hastily constructed" by John Hendel.