When Melissa Rothrock, 33, decided in the spring of 2009 that she wanted to become the first in her family to go to college, she knew a traditional program was out of the question. The mother of four children–one of them just an infant–couldn’t afford a babysitter, and her husband was on the road for days at a time as a truck driver. An online ad targeting stay-at-home moms got her thinking about distance learning. She filled out her information, and soon the phone began to ring with calls from recruiters for various for-profit colleges who were eager to sign her…
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