Bad Review for WGU: Dishonest, Incompetent, and Unreliable

[Merlin]

i have a WGU degree. I enjoyed my experience, but by no means do i think that a WGU degree amounts to some prestigious achievement. it's just a standard bachelor degree. I'm also not even above complaints like this, see my own personal history on this form of whiney complaints about Patten University.

but it's always funny that the people who make insane claims like "It's a shady, disreputable business that provides credentialing at a flat-fee. That's it..." are the same people who are complaining about how the school made it HARDER THAN EXPECTED for them to graduate. "they're a degree mill... because they didn't just accept everything i thought they would!"

...what? you can't have it both ways.

I don't think i have ever been on the same page as bluebooger, but this is a broken clock situation.

Anyone who has been on the forum long enough will occasionally see posts from new posters who come to this forum to figure out their next steps after becoming jaded against some other school. They all vent about why their old school sucks or why some school they tried to get into is disreputable or misrepresentative because of something or other. It happens, all we can do is listen and use those experiences to help guide future students to avoid the same issues. It doesn't matter which school it is, we've seen similar posts about all of them. So, at least for me, I try to keep an open mind but tempered by the fact that I know this isn't the same experience for the vast majority of people. If it were more of a systemic issue, we'd see a lot more complaints about them considering how popular of a destination school WGU is.

Disagreements about transfer credits are particularly problematic. Dfrecore stated it much more succinctly, but transfer problems like the OP mentioned are by far the biggest issue that people have when they try to change schools or come back after a break. It happens at all schools, but WGU has more of them because of the way they structure their degrees and the types of courses that make them up. It isn't worth getting angry about though; if a school doesn't accept your credits, find another one that will. Luckily we have plenty of options these days.

Anyway, yes WGU does have its faults. But it isn't a degree mill, nor are they shadier than any of the other large open-access colleges with aggressive recruiting practices. If they were, they would lose their accreditation pretty quickly. We like them on this board because they accept a lot of transfer credits and accept credits from nontraditional sources, like NA schools and ACE providers.

As for the value of their degrees, a WGU degree has just as much value as every other unrated regionally-accredited no-name school. They are a checkbox degree just like the big 3. Much like the big 3, they are also best suited for adult learners who didn't complete college right out of high school and want to return later in life to do so. While nobody should be impressed by a WGU degree, none of the recruiters or hiring managers, or even academic advisors for Ph.D. programs I've spoken to have had any issues with it. As a hiring manager myself, I see most colleges as pretty much the same unless they are elite schools, or have a spectacularly good or bad reputation. WGU is mostly neutral in this area, though their IT degrees have a positive reputation among the IT community here in the Silicon Valley / San Franciso area.

In any case, while I didn't attend WGU for undergrad, all I can say is that this story doesn't jive with my own personal experience. Either in my time as a grad student or in my experience dealing with admissions again as they review my transcripts towards a second bachelor's degree. While I didn't get all the transfer credits that I was hoping for, I got the important ones and they are reviewing it again next week to look at the contended credits in more detail. So I have to admit to having some cognitive dissonance in this area. Hopefully we see more feedback from other WGU students.