I can’t say why it’s not changing the upload path. What type of field is it? Is it a sub field of a repeater or flex field?
If you want them in the root of the site then you’ll need to mess with the lines that set the path, to be honest I don’t remember what’s in the $uploads variable or what you need to change.
$uploads[‘path’] = $uploads[‘basedir’].’/profiles/’;
$uploads[‘url’] = $uploads[‘baseurl’].’/profiles/’;