Bad Review for WGU: Dishonest, Incompetent, and Unreliable

[scorpion]

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.