Bad Review for WGU: Dishonest, Incompetent, and Unreliable

[scorpion]

The old posts have been moved from the original thread to this one, but the date order is a bit mixed up. Not sure there is any way to fix that right now, but we'll see what we can do.

I think the layout will be pretty confusing, since the top post is now a few layers deep. Hopefully folks will still get something out of it.

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.

WGU is a nonprofit, it isn't a scam.

...

It is a shame WGU wasn't more honest with your situation.

> The credentials or certifications earned are worth your TCOA alone, since the degree isn't

wrong              
people have gotten jobs with the CS degree (even people who transferred in credits) LOL

> OK, I came up with a brief way. They're full of shit.

again, all you have to do is read the reddit and see that people have transferred in many study.com courses and have graduated with a CS degree
perhaps the problem isn't WGU, but you        

Sure, it's just a regular RA degree. I think any mention of impropriety at a university activates people's schemas for a diploma mill, which I never suggested WGU was. But saying that WGU is shady is not only a subjective assessment of their school either -- I lay out the ways that WGU was dishonest and give a case for why they shouldn't be trusted.

WGU's identity apes a regular university, but I think their history and nonprofit status lead people to give them too much credit. Every interaction I've had with them has had the slime attached to it that I've never seen outside of for-profit schools.  If you frequently browse by "new" or check the Removeddit/undelete notifications for the WGU subreddit, you see the huge amount of effort that goes into cleaning up negative reports on WGU. Since I've seen folks echoing the same sentiments and transfer experiences I have, I'm more inclined to think that I'm not a huge outlier -- and that part of WGU's aggressive advertising extends to astroturfing and managing their PR.

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.

There's a variety of incentives that universities have to work toward their students' success, whether it's bound up in reputation/accreditation/federal funding for non-profits, or profitability and repeat business in for-profits. There's a huge difference between having strict but transparent requirements, and having teaser requirements that aren't actually honored. It's this distinction that I think sets WGU apart from the "Big 3" and why it shouldn't be treated as the same class of school.

I see the "you could've just tested out of it!" argument used all the time because of WGU's acceleration model. This just doesn't make sense, and is ultimately an argument that people should suck it up and repeat courses. That might be a feasible option because of the speed and cost of repeating courses at WGU, but it's still a repeat.

WGU must transfer credit for completed university coursework. Between their Title IV and RA requirements, and the realities of an adult student population, there's no getting around it. They publish policies on award of transfer credit, and even specific equivalencies, which students can use to make transfer decisions there. Their ECs make transfer plans with students to prepare them for a decision on the award of credit. Their evaluators have a stated policy for appealing award decisions and how those decisions are decided.

So what happens when they don't honor those same, published guidelines? "just take it again vro"...

When a business makes deceptive claims that benefit them at the expense of their customers, there's a term for it: fraud.

I can't claim to know the internal workings of WGU and prove that this is a case of malice rather than incompetence. But I'll certainly describe the questionable interactions I had while trying to get these issues resolved. You can decide for yourself.

> 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.

LOL, in less than two years you could have completed the degree and be done by now (even with only 30 credits being accepted)        
all that times wasted is on you

Of course, if you're trying to give pragmatic advice, students shouldn't wait around two years for a school to get its shit together. No argument from me. But I didn't need a degree and I was in no rush to get in. Plus, I had a vested interest in clearing up any transfer ambiguity to make sure that the situation I went through wasn't repeated by future students.

My bad review is based on WGU specifically refusing to honor their own transfer guidelines. Plus, it was a transfer plan that I made with the guidance and blessing of WGU's own EC! I really don't know how the logic of a WGU stan can bend so far backwards that having WGU's own guidance rejected becomes the student's fault.

If you plan to blame students for WGU's decisions, there's really a benefit to hindsight in this. That's why my advice is that WGU should never, ever be considered by students who intend to transfer -- you can't afford to have your time wasted by their dishonest practices.