Warning about "Shady" Online Schools

[newPhD]

Things are not looking up for all of the new PhDs entering the job market. Specifically, there are not enough tenure-track positions and many of us are having to settle for visiting positions and even questionable online schools that practically just give away diplomas to people. One online, for-profit "college" (Ashford, which is owned by something called Bridgepoint Education) is advertising for a chair of their online sociology program. If you see an ad for an "Assistant Professor Online" from them, then you should be careful and think twice because the position is for a chair who will have to deal with several full-time online people and hundreds of online adjuncts (some of whom are not even sociologists teaching supposed sociology courses). In addition, I have heard that their teachers work everyday and cannot really have any vacation time because they always have online classes to teach with no breaks of any kind. Worse still, the online classes are full of students who can barely read and write but are supposed to be doing college-level work (sigh...).
Although I am holding out for something better at a real college, I have to wonder how long it will be before I become desperate enough to seek a job with a place like that.
There must be incompetence in that business, as well, because they are advertising for a Chair by posting for an Assistant Professor. Seriously, what person with enough experience to be a chair would respond to an ad for an Assistant Professor?
If you had that kind of experience, wouldn't you have tenure? and why would anyone give up tenure to work as an at-will employee for anyone a company like this?
(Yes, I mean "at-will" as in they can fire you anytime for any reason or no reason at all.)

[Onlineteacher]

I have 5 years of online teaching experience at 3 different online universities. The reasons you work a company like this is that they pay by the student and you can really help some people--if you budget your time, you can make a fine income while working from home. The students are often worse than you describe, but occasionally better. If you want to make a difference helping people who would normally never be able to get quality education, putting your time in and helping them can radically change their lives for the better. That, plus the money, is not a terrible reward.
That said, your life gets consumed by it, and there is no chance for advancement. This is the wave of the future (only with less pay)--gradually replacing people with computers or outsourced paper-graders. Someone at Harvard will give the lectures, and an army of underpaid people with moderate the discussions. Over time, quality will rise because employers won't hire people with these worthless degrees.

[ashford info]

2 random things I know about ashford- 1) I have a friend who works there, ze has an MA in sociology and only teaches sociology courses, not sure about credentials of other people who work there. Ze works very long hours as ashford has strict grading deadlines with their "canned" courses and only pays around $1000 a course, so ze has to teach a LOT of courses to make any kinds of ends meet.

2)Anecdotal evidence, but I had a student who graduated from Ashford come through our sociology MA program a few years ago. Ze is completely brilliant and we ended up working together and coauthoring 3 papers over about 2 years. Ze is now in a highly ranked phd program and will probably end up placed better than I am. I'm sure ze is not the average Ashford student, but I'm sure ze isn't the only student of that caliber who went through the program, so they do exist.