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. 


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.

The 135,000 students enrolled came directly from WGU yesterday. 

The PR problem is that WGU waited hours before notifying students and staff. Students emails to their mentors were returned which caused a huge problem. The emails should never had been returned. They should have been forwarded to a supervisor. Students called Student Services who had no idea what was going on. They weren't told until the end of the day that the layoffs took place. Students still do not have new mentors. New students started today and there's tons of posts of students saying they can't access anything because they no longer have a mentor. That is not a great way to start off your term.

You don't sound like you know much about how tuition operates at WGU. Tuition is a flat fee for 6 months. There is not such thing as part time tuition. Everyone pays the fee based on their degree program. Each degree program has a tuition fee that's billed every 6 months.

There is part time tuition if you are self pay you can get part time tuition and if you are at the end of your term you can get part time tuition if you do not have 12 cus to register for. Military va students can either sign up for the military full time of 18 cus or can sign up for military part time 12 cus. 12 cus is the full time for most non military students. Financial aid students cannot get part time  status because of the financial aid funds, unless at the end of their term. If a student meets any of the criteria stated, they can ask their mentor or call WGU's financial service to get the part time status, it does not occur automatically.

And here is the info from their handbook:
https://cm.wgu.edu/t5/WGU-Student-Policy-Handbook/Tuition-Information-for-Part-Time-Enrollment/ta-p/107
Part-Time Enrollment
As stated in the article Full-Time Enrollment Status, all students are expected to be enrolled full-time for each term, while enrolled at WGU. Full-time for an undergraduate student is 12 competency units (CUs). Full-time for a graduate student is eight (8) CUs.

Students who are unable to enroll full-time due to not having enough CUs in a term may enroll part-time. There are three exceptions to full-time enrollment where a student should be considered part-time.
Students in their last term prior to graduating without enough CUs remaining to be considered full-time.*
Students in the term prior to the demonstration teaching period without enough CUs enrolled in their term to be considered full-time.*
Students in the undergraduate portion of a nursing bridge program who do not have enough CUs remaining to obtain the BSN degree at full-time status.*
Students unable to enroll in full-time CUs for their term and who are approved for part-time status may have their tuition prorated based on CUs attempted for the term. Adding any additional CUs to the term after the part-time status has been processed will result in increased tuition.

Once a student’s term is updated to reflect the part-time status, tuition is prorated and posted to the student’s account. Students who are eligible for financial aid will be reviewed after tuition is prorated. Once reviewed, financial aid will post to the student's account. For undergraduate students who are eligible to receive a federal aid Pell Grant; the Pell Grant is revised based on the number of CUs remaining.

If students are enrolled in less than half-time CUs (less than six CUs as an undergraduate or less than four CUs as a graduate), students are not eligible to receive any direct federal loans.

*Note: Prorated (part-time) students will have their tuition adjusted by the number of competency units attempted within a term, not by time attended within a term. Only tuition will be prorated. All fees are still charged at the full amount for the entire term, regardless of full-time or part-time status in a term.

As I stated I work for WGU as a contract evaluator and contract part time faculty member (new positions they created about a year ago) and I have many colleagues there as well (some as PM's, a few as CI's, and some as enrollment counselors). So I know how the university works, please do not assume I do not.  If anyone does not know how WGU works, it is you apparently. 

As for what happened yesterday, HR and managers had to phone up staff who were being laid off throughout the day, plus load balancing takes a while if a mentor had say 100 plus students those students have to be divided up among existing mentors. I agree it is bad for the students, but management is supposed to go in and confirm degree plans etc.. as for accessing things, the university had a systemwide outage for degree plans, as myself and others could not access plans as they were updating. There was what is called a "red post" on the student login screen to courses most of the day yesterday and part of today.