WGU Changes to Residency Credit Requirements

[bjcheung77]

Hey, did you all notice that there have been some major changes to the Residency Requirements?  Meaning the amount of credits transferable and Non-Transferable has changed drastically!  Some degrees only have a Capstone Requirement (4 credits)!  Does this mean that WGU now has become part of the Big 3?  I think we may need to look into this further!  Can someone who is a student or alumni verify this?  Please!

[natshar]

Hey, did you all notice that there have been some major changes to the Residency Requirements?  Meaning the amount of credits transferable and Non-Transferable has changed drastically!  Some degrees only have a Capstone Requirement (4 credits)!  Does this mean that WGU now has become part of the Big 3?  I think we may need to look into this further!  Can someone who is a student or alumni verify this?  Please!

But either way unless they change their policy to make more than 90 credits transferred that wouldn't change much.

Also, some of WGUs degrees have courses that I have never seen via alt credit. So even though they aren't required at WGU, you can't find them anywhere else so you will end up taking them at WGU in the end.

Interesting news though.

[bjcheung77]

Yes, and that's the reason I'm asking. If they've changed their requirements around for residency, they may have changed the number of residency credits required as well. I think they still need 25% of the degree requirements completed from WGU, but wanted to make sure. I don't think it would have changed, but who knows.

This would be great for individuals going for say an IT degree. Get all the general education requirements completed and leave out the Certs/IT courses for WGU to pick up the tab on those certs, not much has changed, it's just that it'll be more flexible if they do allow other courses to be transferred in, may save time too... I'd like to see what changes there are if any.

[dfrecore]

I know that for some of the business degrees, they changed it and won't take up to 42cr in transfer. I would think those would be almost impossible to complete in a single term.

[Life_One]

Thanks for the update, I'll follow this thread. If I learn anything more, I'll contribute!

[Merlin]

Hey, did you all notice that there have been some major changes to the Residency Requirements?  Meaning the amount of credits transferable and Non-Transferable has changed drastically!  Some degrees only have a Capstone Requirement (4 credits)!  Does this mean that WGU now has become part of the Big 3?  I think we may need to look into this further!  Can someone who is a student or alumni verify this?  Please!

I've been chatting with the WGU admissions folks quite a bit lately, and from what I can tell nothing has really changed since I attended last year, except in regards to specific degree requirements. The school itself still requires at least 30 CU (25% of the degree) to be taken at WGU, with some degrees requiring a few more courses to be taken from WGU directly. The rest can be transferred in if you have the right courses or certifications.

All the WGU degrees require the Capstone to be taken from WGU of course, but some degree programs require additional courses. As Dfrecore mentioned earlier, they recently changed the BSBA so it now requires all of the courses in the major to be taken from WGU directly, plus the Capstone of course. That amounts to 11 courses (36cu) for the Business Admin Management degree, though some of the other BSBA sub degrees may require more. It was better before, but 11 courses can still be knocked out in a single term as long as the student can complete at least 3 courses every 2 months or so. Individually, most courses seem like they can be completed in the same time frame at WGU as they can at places like Study.com or StraighterLine. A lot of the accelerators report being able to complete 2-3 courses per month or more.

Luckily, WGU hasn't made similar changes to the IT side as they have to the business side... yet. The BSCS still requires students to take Data Structures & Algorithms II and Discrete Mathematics II (plus the Capstone), but the BSSD and BSCSIA do not require anything more than the Capstone itself.

All this really means is that people need to look at the transfer guide to figure out what courses must be taken from WGU, just as they did before. If the required courses total to less than 30 CU, then they have the freedom to determine which of the balance of courses they plan to take from WGU to complete the 25% residency requirement. The rest can be planned out to be taken from CLEP or ACE providers, etc. and transferred in.

Either way, this doesn't really make WGU qualify to be part of the Big 3 (not that there is a Big 3 anymore) since they don't allow you to transfer in 114+ credits towards a degree. IMO, we really only have a Big 2 now considering that COSC really only allows 90 credits to be transferred in for people starting without RA credits.

Maybe if you count COSC as 1/2 of a big 3 school and WGU as the other 1/2 of school, together they can bump it back up to a Big 3.