Bad Review for WGU: Dishonest, Incompetent, and Unreliable

[scorpion]

This is a quick post to split off the WGU discussion from my degree plan into its own thread. If you're interested in my work or educational background, and what I'm doing instead of WGU, please give it a read!

I don't expect to change anyone's mind if you're a WGU stan. This is purely a hate review for my very bad experience. Here's the takeaway:
Forget the name, forget the story, forget the marketing spiel. WGU is not a university. It's a shady, disreputable business that provides credentialing at a flat-fee. That's it. 
Maybe the credentialing will serve your purpose, maybe it won't, but if you go into this place expecting anything else out of it, you're wasting your time.

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I first heard about WGU in 2015 when I worked briefly with a graduate of one of their business programs. I read up on their history, which I was ideologically aligned with, and came away very interested in their model. Since I was only looking for a CS degree, which they didn't offer at the time, I didn't think of attending.

Fast forward to 2018. WGU announces a new BSCS program. By mid-summer, it's open to applicants in my state. I sign up as soon as it opens and work with my enrollment counselor on a plan to accelerate, satisfying all my gen-eds from my associate degree, and several other requirements from a combination of RA transfer credit, alternative credit, and industry certifications (Microsoft). A few transcripts later, I sent in about 90 RA credits from my community college, along with a long list of certs that I took directly off the WGU partners page for course equivalencies. I get back an eval with fewer than 30 credits applied.

I went back to my enrollment counselor with the bad news. He was sympathetic and played dumb at all the planned credits failing to apply, and suggested I file an appeal, which I did. I spent a significant amount of time digging up every old syllabus from my former classes, matching the COs line-by-line to the WGU catalog, and made a table of every course matched against its satisficing equivalent from the WGU partners page (quoting directly that such-and-such cert satisfied the requirement).

The evaluation that came back was underwhelming, to say the least. It was only by wrangling the syllabus for some CS classes that I was awarded any credit, and almost every single certificate and alt-credit that I had planned was rejected. Some introductory MTA certs were brought in, but even these were not all used to satisfy the course equivalencies listed on the partner page. The other content that I listed in my appeal was completely ignored. No mention, no response, nothing.

I met with my EC shortly after to lick my wounds and figure out the next steps. The only good thing I can say about WGU is that my EC went to bat for me: he was incensed, promised to take this up to the program chair, etc. The bad part is, that was apparently bullshit. This started a process that lasted from that first application all the way to the present day (more than two years). In between, I heard every excuse in the book from my ECs, had them make things up on the spot multiple times (sure, lie to me about what Microsoft's roadmap for certs is when I'm standing next to the folks who created them), and got ghosted multiple times.

Long story short:

• My EC "worked" on this issue for 2-3 months, with nothing to show and nobody else to meet. He first said that he was taking it to his manager, then to the program chairs, then the program chairs were reviewing it with the program development team, then he was going to bring it up in person during an educational conference they were holding. I honestly have no idea of any of this happened, because from my end, absolutely nothing changed for my evaluation and I got no explanation whatsoever.
  
• After months of following up on it and getting a different story each time, I left it on the backburner. My EC never claimed to have gotten results from any of his efforts, and he ghosted me after that. In the 6+ months gap, I began the NAB inquiry I documented below.
  
• After months of no contact from WGU, I got a regular outreach call from a completely new EC. No word on what happened to the old one, and the new one had no idea about my situation. I gave her the rundown, she was shocked, she went to bat for me and promised the same things. Starting from scratch, OK.
  
• My new EC actually did some work. She pulled in the enrollment manager for the College of IT, and he did receive all my documentation of the issue. Some weeks of back and forth, he said he was sending it to the program chairs and that they would have to convene to review their transfer equivalencies.
  
• It was another five months of checking in with him before I got anything back: my new EC called back and wanted to double-check the incoming transfer items. Two. They brought in two certs / courses. I sent the full list back and they went over it again.
  
• A month later, on the two year mark from my original application on 5/2018, I finally got back an eval that fixed some of the problems I first raised in my appeal.
  
• Except... It had been so long since I started, the original CS courses would no longer come in (5-year limit) and they waited so long to bring in the certs that the provider literally killed them off by the time WGU honored them.
  

So after more than two years of effort to get WGU to honor their own transfer guidelines, and forcing them to fix my evaluation through several appeals, they gave me a fixed evaluation... for fewer credits than when I started. Fuck WGU.

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National Advisory Board
At this point, I was pretty concerned that they refused to accept any of the certifications they claimed they would. I was especially concerned because the issuer of most of my certifications was listed as an affiliated partner, and even sat on WGU's National Advisory Board (NAB), where they were described as working with WGU to set guidelines and provide industry and certification guidance. I also happened to work for them.

I wanted to make sure to settle the issue for anyone else trying to bring these certs in, so I started an inquiry to clear up the confusion. This was separate to anything to do with my application, or my employer. Again, I did not reference this in any appeals, and did not claim to be representing myself as anything other than a student. I was purely interested in getting the issuer of these certifications and WGU to work together to clear up ambiguity in what is or isn't accepted.

After spending some time going back and forth, I worked my way up through escalations until I contacted Kassandra Soliz, the EA to Scott Pulsipher, WGU's president. She worked with me to get information from the NAB on the issue. I followed up, getting a "still working on it" response a few weeks later. After that email, she ghosted me permanently. No responses to calls, no responses to emails, nothing.

Concurrent with this, I checked my work's internal network for anything to do with a partnership with WGU. I emailed our education VPs, checked all of our HR and employee documents, and searched for every mention of WGU at all. I was not able to confirm anyone who had an affiliation with them, or that there was any partnership involved. I don't claim that this is exhaustive, but I was becoming increasingly skeptical that there was any relationship with WGU.

With no word from my employer of an affiliation, and nobody else at the school who claimed to know who the NAB representative was, it seems like nobody could produce anything within the decade that showed there was any affiliation with WGU at all. I hope CELA sorts it out, because as near as I can tell, WGU is still materially misrepresenting their affiliations and partners to this day.

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Overall impression
I found this past thread lines up pretty well with my experience. Everything about WGU screams "scam": the lies and pressure sales tactics from ECs, the completely opaque and dishonest transfer process that doesn't honor their own transfer guidelines, and even misrepresenting their partners and affiliations. 

Who should choose WGU?

• You're not transferring or are willing to start from scratch
  
• You can finish in few enough terms that the cost is still competitive with the Big 3
  
• You don't care about your GPA (including job minimums, graduate school requirements, etc.)
  
• The credentials or certifications earned are worth your TCOA alone, since the degree isn't
  

The idea of "reputation" has been talked to death. I'm sure that anyone that's on this forum or is considering the Big 3 have already decided how much they value it in their education plans. My experience with WGU was the first time I've seen a school that put up so many red flags that its reputation went into the negative. It belongs firmly in the ranks of the DeVry's and Trump University's of the world, and I would only recommend it if you enjoy having your time and breath wasted.

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Here's my original post from the degree plan thread:

That quote was from the second line of the OP's section on their background. Though they don't really go into any detail.

I had a bit more explanation of how I ended up here in my lost first draft, but I didn't rewrite it since it doesn't add anything to this degree plan. Also, people usually stick to the positive and breathlessly stanning their alma mater. Criticize any of these fine institutions and you risk bringing out their matriculated fanbase in a frothing, rabid defense. No offense to present company, of course.

>  no brief way I can express just how shady and incompetent WGU is.

many people have done WGU no problem        

OK, I came up with a brief way. They're full of shit.

Seriously, I don't know how much clearer to make it. They were my first pick. I read all the same things you did, made a plan based on lynda's advice and reports, etc. I liked the structure of their CBE program and I was optimistic about the new CS program and counted down the days 'til it released.

I applied 5/29/18. On 5/29/2020 (seriously!), after two literal years of back and forth with the program chairs, I finally got back an academic eval that corrected the issues I raised in my very first application.

In between was months of getting passed around between departments, lied to by advisors, getting the talking-to-a-brick-wall treatment from every evaluation appeal until I pulled in department heads, having WGU walk back on their published, stated transfer guidelines, and finally ghosting me for months at a time while "the program chairs are working on it."

The long story short is that transfers to WGU are, plain and simple, bullshit. The advisors don't honor planned transfers. The evaluators won't bring in content even if it matches exactly the catalog and partner transfer page requirements. Based on some of the tripe they tried to feed me, I get the impression that the administration there has a high opinion of the gullibility of their student base. P.S., try looking at the companies on their "National Advisory Board" and find out how many are actually aware of WGU at all.

You can even see in the newest comments on my OG thread that their advisors are still lying to people about transfers will work. Look through some of the downvoted posts in /r/wgu of folks who have had the same transfer experience.

I'm not saying that WGU is responsible for all of the world's ills, but with all the rave reviews and astroturfing they do in their sub, I'm not going to lie about my bad experience either. I know a lot more about how accreditations and transfer appeals work now than I did back then. I'm sure there are still people who are starting from scratch and will get a benefit out of accelerating through WGU. My advice, and my experience, says that if you're looking to transfer to WGU - don't.

Considering that the WGU CS degree didn't even go live until summer 2018, and it sounds like they signed up right after that, chances are that they experienced some hiccups with the launch of the CS program. I know they've made a number of changes to the CS program since it originally launched, so I expect that the issues that they had have probably been resolved. There are dozens of people on this forum alone who have managed to successfully complete degrees (multiple degrees in some cases) at WGU and I've only seen a few issues brought up. Most of the time WGU is pretty good about resolving them. I personally know a few people who have either completed the BSCS or are in the middle of completing it now so it can't be too messed up.

The BSCS in 2018 had problems, the university had bigger ones.

I'm actually considering going back to complete a BS CS at WGU. In fact, I have a call scheduled with an admissions counselor tomorrow to see if they can run my eval to tell me what my balance of credits looks like. Looking at their transfer guide it seems like I should only need ~30 credits or so given my other degrees, so I can probably bang that out in a few months or less. I need to take some of those same courses to prepare for my Ph.D. studies anyway so this would allow me to kill two birds with the same stone. I am currently taking courses from Coursera, but I figure I might as well earn a degree while I'm at it.

Good luck with that.