In the field of IT, how does University of Phoenix hold up?

FAFSA isn't something that you use up. FAFSA is not financial aid. FAFSA is a financial aid application. It's surprising that you could have been on financial aid for 3 years and not know this. You have also made a false assumption about financial aid. Student loans are not limited as to the number of years that may be used. Some state and federal grants have limits as to how many years they can be received, but some don't. Grants are need-based, so your income might not let you get grants in any case. Loans have maximum annual and lifetime amount limits. The lifetime government limit is $57,500 for independent undergraduate students. However, you have a bachelors degree so you may qualify for admission to a masters degree program, which has much higher limits that are completely separate from undergraduate limits. You don't always need to have a bachelors degree in computer science in order to be admitted into a masters program for computer science or related programs such as software engineering, IT, or MBA/IT programs. Even programs that require a BSCS will often allow exceptions to enroll on a conditional basis to complete the core requirements that are missing.

Going to University of Phoenix would be making the same mistake twice. You already have one useless degree, so getting another is double the foolishness. You should get a degree from a respectable university that has the maximum accreditation for the degree you pursue. UoP degrees have little respect and are often discounted by employers compared to other degrees. I've had friends who earned UoP degrees and the coursework was a sad joke compared even to community college classes. I helped tutor a friend for the same subject that she took at a community college and at UoP and the difference was obvious. The UoP class didn't even cover half of the material that the community class did, and the instruction was terrible and the grading was ridiculously easy. The average UoP student was also highly unqualified and wouldn't be able to get into any real university. A large percentage of the class was functionally illiterate with the worst writing and language skills you can imagine. This is a serious problem for students like my friend who was highly literate and could have done university work because her degree gets devalued due to the poor average incompetence of the other graduates that employers have to deal with. UoP pumps out huge numbers of graduates who are incompetent, which employers and HR staff have recognized for decades. UoP degrees can help some people advance in their current companies to positions that require a degree, but the company already knows whether the employee is deserving of the position due to experience. It's a very different story when trying to use a UoP degree to find work at another company.

Your profile says you're in Arizona. ASU has several online masters degrees that could be good for you, including software engineering and information management. Focusing on getting a masters degree will be faster, easier, and cheaper than getting a second bachelors degree, and it will qualify you to advance to higher level positions. Nobody will care about your bachelors degree once you earn a masters degree at a large and well-known public university.

No, no no no no. Employers do not respect U of P and the other for-profit schools. The last thing you need in your current situation is to attend a school with an actively bad rep, and end up making things worse. And you have better, and less expensive, options.

First, Oregon State U offers an accelerated, online, ABET accredited (!!!) computer science program purposefully designed for people who already have a bachelors. And because they are a public uni, in my observation, there costs are a bit lower than at some other schools, even if you're from out of state:

http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/unde...

Second, although I know you want to do this online, see if there are any reputable schools that offer this as a part-time degree, locally. You may be able to mix in some online classes at a traditional, local school, to make the schedule work better for you.

Third, there are some masters degree programs you could enter with an unrelated bachelors, in things like IT management. But if I may be honest, without related work experience, jumping into that field out of one of those degrees would be difficult. I do prefer your idea of getting a second bachelors, so you have the actual degree employers want - and ideally, that's a BS in CS or Software Engineering.

Talk to any school about your aid options. For the most part, you'll be looking at private student loans for this, since you already have a bachelors, so it's wise to try to keep your costs down. But you do have some aid options. Talk to the schools directly.

ITT Tech, University of Phoenix, Kaplan, DeVry, Corinthian, Full Sail University, US Career Institute, etc, etc are known as "for-profit" schools. They are accredited universities, but most of their credits will not be accepted by other schools. Please, please keep this in mind. Other universities will not accept their credits. Their diplomas are a joke. Do some research on them. They basically exist to suck money from students. They make students take government loans or even private loans that they know their students can't pay back. Then the school gets their money and the students are stuck with the loans. So basically, they make the students go into massive debt and once they graduate, they don't really help place the student in a job that they wanted. These schools are also tons more expensive than public schools and sometimes even more expensive than private universities. If you're uncertain whether a school is a for profit school or not, google it. Sometimes even the Wikipedia page will flat out say it's a for profit school. There are many, many, many of them right now.

I think a lot of that has to do with what kind of a job in IT you want to achieve. I know some people in quality assurance that have done fine with trade school type education but if your trying to become a developer it might be more difficult to get there using that route and if your trying to become a project manager or business analyst you might have a hard time without a more prestigious degree then from an online university. I think you can take out stafford loans for as many years as you are in school but you would have to check on that. I really don't recommend going through all of the work of majoring in computer science if you don't honestly like it though. If you're just looking for better career options then it probably makes more sense to major in something like business, there are even a lot of part time MBA programs.

And I agree with the person above me about the dangers/ bad idea that is for-profit schools.

Please be aware that U of P is one of those private For-profit schools. Their course credits usually do ** NOT ** transfer to other schools, even if the for-profit school is regionally accredited as opposed to only nationally accredited.

This consumer site has a lot of negative posts by former students of those for-profit schools, and please heed the students' warnings: http://www.complaintsboard.com/ and can search.

Please instead consider the more affordable community college and/or the state-public university as long as the program is accredited within the industry. Just about all community colleges and state-public universities offer some online classes. An fyi that "american public university" is a for-profit school.

For U.S. colleges: http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ

General career info: http://www.bls.gov/ooh and can search.

This site is supposed to have accredited programs in computers, technology and engineering (though please still forgo those for-profit schools): http://www.abet.org/