U of Phoenix and DeVry are high-quality correspondence schools. Degrees from these places are definitely worth something, but they are still not as highly esteemed as degrees from brick & mortar colleges, where you sit in an actual classroom in the company of other people. I agree, but maybe for more touchy-feely reasons than a hiring manager might.
When you work in computers, you are actually working in people. People use programs, and in most cases they use them to do work, not to relax. Good software is effective (it has a place in the workflow), it is understandable and easy to use (by the humans who will use it, who are not geniuses, programmers, or computer hobbyists) and it is maintainable (by people who will have to get into your head without ever meeting you.) Working with people and for people requires human skills. Today's technical skills are tomorrow's technical history. People knowledge is constant.
I have worked with computers for 25 years, and in finance for the last 12, and it has been great. I have always been on the applications side, moving from engineering to sales support to transportation services to portfolio management. Each job has been a step up, both in pay and in satisfaction. I've been able to skip around because that is how IT is, because I work like a slave (for the first months) at each new job, because I am interested in each new situation and take the trouble to learn how people work, and understand what the business of the enterprise is. That's what makes me most valuable to my employers. That kind of flexibility and understanding does not grow out of the study of b-trees or network topologies.
A decent college experience puts you among peers and a variety of courses and intellectuals, where you will bump into things you will never again encounter. You can pick up a diversity of knowledge and experience, much of which will not seem useful until you understand it or use it, years later. I wouldn't overindulge the tech courses; get a good dose of the liberal arts, and a handful of business classes (especially a semester or two of accounting.) Hiring managers will see that you have a B.S., and won't delve into your transcript. Job experience trumps class experience, so get internships or part-time IT work along the way; after a degree and experience, what counts most is being interesting and seeming intelligent, and a boss will not look at any eighty hours of tech classes on your transcript to discern that.
