Supposed degree watchdog Geteducated.com may need its own watchdog

Spend time on the Web looking for an online degree program, and you'll confront dozens of similar-sounding, similar-looking sites offering help. Most of these are simply "lead generators," which means their purpose has little to do with your quest for a degree. These sites -- usually without much human intervention, using a lot of canned content -- exist only to connect would-be students to salespeople. The more people who click on X University, the more X University pays that site.

One site seemed several notches above the others, however. GetEducated.com, which gets about as much traffic as the U.S. government's college advice site, calls itself a "consumer watchdog and advocacy group" that "rates, ranks and verifies the cost, quality and credibility of online colleges and universities." In bold letters, it states its mission: "Educate - Advocate - Protect."