WGU Layoffs

[ss20ts]

This morning WGU laid off about 160 mentors and course instructors from the business and healthcare divisions. This is in addition to the 11%+ tuition increased announced for August 1st. Social media blowing up because WGU didn't transition the students over to new mentors before the layoffs. They haven't transitioned anyone today. Students are stuck without any classes to work on. New students are now in limbo as a new group starts tomorrow. This is such a disaster. I feel for everyone at WGU who's going through this. Layoffs suck.

[dfrecore]

I can see not transitioning people early - they can't do that without the mentors knowing about it, and I'm sure they didn't want that getting out beforehand. So now everyone will be in limbo for a few days. Their best bet would be to email all current students and give everyone an extra week or two on the end of their current term if need be (would have been nice to send that out immediately upon announcing the layoff).

[ss20ts]

WGU didn't send out anything notifying students until the end of the business day. Student Services was unaware of the layoffs and had tons of people calling wanting to know what was going on and have classes opened up. It's been a disaster there today. Students are really unhappy based on social media. I've seen over a thousand comments on various threads. There's only a few people ok with what happened today.

[dfrecore]

WGU didn't send out anything notifying students until the end of the business day. Student Services was unaware of the layoffs and had tons of people calling wanting to know what was going on and have classes opened up. It's been a disaster there today. Students are really unhappy based on social media. I've seen over a thousand comments on various threads. There's only a few people ok with what happened today.

There are HR laws about layoffs that have to be followed; I worked in HR for years, you can't just go announcing it to the world and letting employees find out via social media and whatnot.  Not saying that they handled it well (I'm sure they didn't), but companies rarely do this well.

Like I said, their best bet is to give people a term extension.

[ss20ts]

I'm well aware that there are laws that have to be followed. I've also worked in HR. No one said anything about announcing specific people were laid off on social media. Students are completely left hanging. A number of people are wondering if the school is closing. No one has any answers. You can't just dump 160 mentors and think nothing will happen and students will all be chill waiting days for the school to get their act together. From what I've read the decision to layoff these folks was made 3 days ago so they did not properly prepare for layoffs. It's a PR nightmare. I've been through layoffs and there's a right way and a wrong way to handle them. Most of the time companies don't handle them the right way and create even more problems for themselves.

[natshar]

This morning WGU laid off about 160 mentors and course instructors from the business and healthcare divisions. This is in addition to the 11%+ tuition increased announced for August 1st. Social media blowing up because WGU didn't transition the students over to new mentors before the layoffs. They haven't transitioned anyone today. Students are stuck without any classes to work on. New students are now in limbo as a new group starts tomorrow. This is such a disaster. I feel for everyone at WGU who's going through this. Layoffs suck.

I saw your posts and yeah people are upset.

I saw one person said that they had a mentor and asked to switch to a new one due to some issues. So they gave her a new mentor two days ago. Then today she was informed that new mentor was being laid off. Kind of a frustrating situation.

I noticed almost all of the mentors are tied to specific programs. I wonder if they are going to discontinue or revamp certain programs.

[bjcheung77]

Wow, look at those senior leaders getting their positions revamped or reworked... most of them are going to be in the 6 figures range.  I'm not sure why it's going that far down to the line towards "mentors", I would have thought it would go up to the manager level thus sparing the "mentors"... Here's the reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/ob...yoffs_wgu/

[ashkir]

reddit seems upset over these

https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/ob...yoffs_wgu/

[dfrecore]

Yeah, it was just handled very poorly. This tends to be the case, I swear they need to have a class on how to do this. Communication is key, both internally with the people being laid off and the people who will be dealing with the fallout from that (read: taking over their workload); and externally with customers. Nobody ever gets it right.

The fact that they didn't have a communication plan for students affected by this is baffling, but not shocking, unfortunately.

[sacredrain]

I'm well aware that there are laws that have to be followed. I've also worked in HR. No one said anything about announcing specific people were laid off on social media. Students are completely left hanging. A number of people are wondering if the school is closing. No one has any answers. You can't just dump 160 mentors and think nothing will happen and students will all be chill waiting days for the school to get their act together. From what I've read the decision to layoff these folks was made 3 days ago so they did not properly prepare for layoffs. It's a PR nightmare. I've been through layoffs and there's a right way and a wrong way to handle them. Most of the time companies don't handle them the right way and create even more problems for themselves.

I currently work at WGU and the university is not closing. I am an evaluator and a faculty member, both are contract positions. Basically the 2 schools that did the layoffs were already over staffed. The other schools at the university: the Teachers College and IT, have been following a very lean budget and staffing for years. As for the layoffs, HR phoned the staff members, but word had spread and some were posting online. The downside to WGU's affordable pricing is that they need many students to keep the ship afloat and while they do have over 100k students, the attrition rate is quite high, there are many students who simply cannot do the work or are not willing to do the work. So it is either  raise tuition to a very high level or have layoffs. Which tuition is being raised in some programs in August at WGU, modestly but still an increase.

There is no wrong or right way to tell someone they are going to be laid off, it will always leak, especially in today's social media atmosphere. In fact when I worked at the former Kaplan University (now Purdue Global), about 1000 of us were laid off in 2012 and we were told a week before Christmas that year, despite having meetings and everyone behaving if everything was normal. In fact my boss at the time, was the one who had to call our team and tell us and she got a surprise because at the end of the day once she had told everyone, she then got a call from her boss and HR telling her she was being laid off as well.

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This morning WGU laid off about 160 mentors and course instructors from the business and healthcare divisions. This is in addition to the 11%+ tuition increased announced for August 1st. Social media blowing up because WGU didn't transition the students over to new mentors before the layoffs. They haven't transitioned anyone today. Students are stuck without any classes to work on. New students are now in limbo as a new group starts tomorrow. This is such a disaster. I feel for everyone at WGU who's going through this. Layoffs suck.

I saw your posts and yeah people are upset.

I saw one person said that they had a mentor and asked to switch to a new one due to some issues. So they gave her a new mentor two days ago. Then today she was informed that new mentor was being laid off. Kind of a frustrating situation.

I noticed almost all of the mentors are tied to specific programs. I wonder if they are going to discontinue or revamp certain programs.

I cant really comment but there will be some changes to all programs across the board. Some are going to be positive, others will not be so positive. But as I said, these things happen and right now with a booming economy there are less people going to college, as they can get a job paying more right now.