Employer views also vary depending on the program, Glaser says, and an applicant's undergraduate education is just one part of the hiring decision.

Karl McDonnell, chief executive officer at Strayer Education, Inc. – including the for-profitStrayer University, which grants online bachelor's and other degrees – says it's inaccurate to lump all for-profit bachelor's programs into one category. He says there's some degree of variability in outcomes in any industry.

While the school offers "very little" in terms of career services, for instance, McDonnell says, it has relationships with hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies.

[Discover how to vet a for-profit online program.]

"Are there institutions where maybe outcomes have been low and therefore the economic return for students has been lower than what somebody had hoped? I think that's clear; I think that's obvious. But to say that that is the case for an entire sector – it's not representative of our experience," McDonnell says.

Representatives from three other online, for-profit programs declined or were unavailable to comment.

Still, employers deciding between two equally qualified job candidates are more likely to prefer the one with an undergraduate education at a traditional university over the one with an online, buy fake university diploma, for-profit bachelor's, says Glaser from Adecco Staffing.

Greg Keller, chief operating officer at the Washington, D.C.-based national recruiting firm Bloomfield & Company, says online degrees alone don't carry as much as a stigma as the for-profit classification because reputable institutions have launched online programs in the past few years.