WGU Layoffs

[sacredrain]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

You and I can agree to disagree, as I said I seriously doubt there are 135,000 students at WGU at the moment. As for the pr thing, its not their fault that people took to the internet to say they had been laid off, we live in the social media era, this type of thing will happen. You also cant help it that universities are sensing blood and after students. There is only a limited pool of students and too many universities and colleges in America, so competition is fierce. If you are a private university without state funds you will have to go after every student you can, as you are competing against tax payer funded universities. 

Layoffs do happen, where I work full time they are talking about layoffs and freezing positions, despite our online programs having record growth and our on campus programs as well, plus we have had our second year of tuition increases, yet the university's finance department is all about shoring up finances and make us even more financially solvent. Basically these universities know they can keep people working even harder for less money and that is the name of the game now: get as many students as you can, fill up classes with students, etc and not hire any additional staff.

Not only that not all students are paying the full rate, some are part time as well so without knowing who is part time, who is paying what your calculations are far off. Plus without knowing what their expenses are, it is hard to see how much they are actually bringing in or have left over. I know some full time faculty there were making 80K plus a year with benefits, plus some program mentors were at 55k to 65K per year with benefits. Not only that they have campuses in a few states and staff there as well, so without knowing how much they brought in and how much they have in expenses, its hard to determine what their financial picture is like. I am not defending them, just pointing out to everyone how this works and why this probably happened. But people will think what they want to think and believe what they want. In all honesty I have seen places lay off more people in higher ed and K to 12 ed than WGU, the fact it is only 160 people is a blessing compared to a school district that is discussing laying off 400 in the upcoming school year.