WGU MSCSIA course flexibility???

[Merlin]

My brother is currently attending WGU for his masters. There are changes at the university right now and it seems that standard path is going to be the way to go. Along with changes on accessing courses outside your term as that is no longer allowed. 

You also will be limited in terms of courses you can register for. Basically WGU has slowed down the accelerating of students to some degree.

I am in a master's program at WGU right now, and I can assure you that neither of those statements are completely true.

Yes, the master's programs are designed around following a specific path to the end. However, as a student, you still have influence and control over your progression. I completely changed the order of the courses I am taking in my master's program because I was able to make a case to my program mentor about why I felt this was a more reasonable course order for me based on course overlap and synergies. I was so prepared that my mentor has been super supportive and has allowed me to follow my own path. It has paid off since I'm on the second to last course right now and I expect to be done within a single term.

As for acceleration, people are blowing the latest changes out of proportion. None of the changes really impact the ability to accelerate at all. The only change that affects accelerators is that you cannot "work ahead" on a course that is not active and included in your term. But that isn't an issue since you can preview courses now (which includes taking any pre-assessments), and you can always add a second course to your term before the first one is complete if needed. Program mentors are encouraged to limit acceleration to one course at a time (this is really just to limit license use), but it isn't a technical limitation or requirement.

What I do is when I start working on a new course, I have my program mentor add the next course to my term, but I don't approve it until I'm close to being ready to finish the first one. That way I can activate the next course at my discretion. I am still accelerating two courses at once, but with a small overlap so I don't lose acceleration efficiency.

On top of that, they added two new features which make it easy to drop courses that you add to your term but cannot finish before the end of the term. Plus, you are allowed an automatic 30-day extension on the term to finish your current course if you need it. That 30-day extension had previously only been allowed for the capstone course at the end of your program, but it now applies to any single course.

In any case, don't listen to the hype. Accelerating at WGU is very much alive and well. It just requires students to pay attention and plan ahead.