University Teaching as E-Business?
Research and Policy Agendas

Case Study: Western Governors University

Home | March 2001 Meeting | October 2001 Meeting | Readings | Advisory Group | Case Studies

CSHE > Research > University Teaching as E-Business > Case Studies > Western Governors University

NB: These draft case studies, compiled by Shannon Lawrence, are an internal resource for the University Teaching as E-business? research project. Originally released in October 2001, they were updated in March 2002. They were gathered from numerous sources, including news articles, press releases, scholarly reports, and company websites. In many cases, information presented herein was taken directly from The Chronicle of Higher Education's longitudinal series of articles on Information Technology and Distance Education, which represents the single best source for information about this evolving universe.

Western Governors University (WGU) is private, not-for-profit, virtual university offering competency-based degrees at the associate's, bachelor's and master's level. WGU was founded in June 1995 as a joint venture by the members of the Western Governors Association to address regional higher education needs. WGU's first degree and certificate programs were opened to students through its website (www.wgu.edu ) in 1998. WGU is the only competency-based university with accreditation status.

The university has 30 employees and faculty members in its Salt Lake City, Utah, office, where WGU is based, and online in California, Colorado, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. As of February 2001, the university had 500 students enrolled, up from 200 students in the previous year. The average age of WGU students is 40 years, and 85 percent work full-time. WGU has students enrolled from 44 states and 5 countries, with a nearly even split between male and female students. In addition, WGU has 10 articulation agreements in place with institutions from around the country.

Products/Services

The university offers 939 business, information technology and education courses in its online catalog from 45 education providers across the United States and Canada. There are three types of classes offered through WGU: self-paced, which are typically asynchronous or have a flexible schedule; term-based, which have a fixed beginning and end date, and which students often take with a cohort or group; and short-term, which also have a fixed beginning and end date and are completed in one week or less.

The courses and programs offered through WGU are delivered to students through various distance learning methods. Those methods include some high-tech approaches (such as desktop video) and traditional approaches (such as postal correspondence). Some high-tech ways of connecting students and teachers include e-mail, the World Wide Web, closed-circuit cable television, video and audio tapes, video conferencing, satellite broadcasts, and voice mail.

Instead of entrusting a single professor with the authority to design a course of study, deliver information, and test students on their knowledge, W.G.U. divides those tasks among several groups. WGU's distributed faculty includes mentors, the program councils, and the assessment council. Each student is assigned a mentor who is knowledgeable in the student's program field to work with a student throughout his or her progress toward a degree or certificate. The mentor develops an Academic Action Plan, a kind of roadmap, for the student to follow to earn a degree or certificate. Program councils, which are comprised of experts from the program field, examine the competency-based degrees and certificates, and must approve them prior to inclusion in the Catalog. Faculty on the assessment council, who are national assessment authorities, are responsible for reviewing credentialing assessments to ensure that they are valid measures of the competencies related to a given degree or certificate. WGU does not have any teaching faculty, because all courses are taught by the education providers' instructors.

The costs of courses and programs offered through the WGU vary according to the education provider and the class. The Catalog lists the total cost for a class (including WGU's fees), and the cost is the same for all WGU students who enroll in the class, regardless of their state of residence. Tuition varies by program and ranges from $120 for a single course to $4900 in tuition.

The competency-based model is designed for the working adult who already has a mixture of college and work experience and doesn't have time to go back to school. Each degree or certificate program has its own application requirements, although several of the certificates are generally unrestricted. WGU awards its degrees and certificates based on what a student knows, rather than on the number of hours a student spent in class or the number of credits earned. WGU does so by administering assessments that give students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of a particular subject area by showing competency in a number of "domains." These include general education, such as writing and mathematics, and domains specific to the subject, such as business management. Students illustrate mastery by passing a number of assessments, which can range from a pencil-and-paper test to a hands-on demonstration of a skill. These assessments correlate to a specific set of competencies or performance descriptions.

Each major has its own project requirements. For example, in an associate degree of business science, students have to create a marketing plan for a small company. The project takes the form of a five-page essay in which students detail how a company can improve its reach to customers. These projects are part of the university's portfolio requirement. Professors review the portfolio to determine whether the student has demonstrated the knowledge and skills to earn a degree.

Western Governors officials create some of their own assessment examinations and buy some from other organizations, such as the ACT and the Educational Testing Service. For WGU's own exams, experts from the professional and academic arenas collaborate to determine what students need to demonstrate to prove they are competent in a field. Unlike traditional colleges, Western Governors separates assessment from learning. The professors who grade the assessment exams have not had any prior interaction with the student.

Western Governors learned how to assess outcomes from other institutions, such as Excelsior College and Alverno College, a women's institution in Milwaukee. The university has found that assessment is particularly popular with private companies whose employees take the university's courses. The university gets much of its money as donations from such companies, and it works with them to create degree programs and to find out what knowledge students must have to be able to do jobs at the companies well.

Governance

WGU selects education providers that meet its strenuous quality screening to list courses and programs in the catalog. To assist its affiliated education providers in developing their niches and in meeting students’ expectations for their courseware, WGU offers several support services to them, including communications, student support services, advisement and consultation, market recognition, and transfer and articulation. One of the most-cited reasons for such collaborations is that they create successful marketing tools. Institutions can take advantage of creative ideas developed at neighboring institutions. And colleges can share services and courses, instead of reinventing the wheel. Additionally, WGU gives its affiliate education providers a world-wide stage for their distance-delivered courses as well as support services such as the Online Bookstore, Central Library, and student support services.

The university is overseen by a number of boards, including a National Advisory Board, a Board of Trustees, and an Academic Policy Committee.

The WGU National Advisory Board was created in order to enhance the implementation of the WGU mission, and aid in the strategic planning process of the WGU. The NAB serves at the pleasure of the Board of Trustees and consists of a diverse group of industry representatives, currently including the fields of technology, publishing, and consulting. The primary aim of the NAB is to foster a global and visionary perspective consistent with the successful implementation of the Western Governors University. (See appendix 5 for a list of board members)

The members of the Board of Trustees are elected by the governors of the states that participate in WGU. WGU is governed by a board of trustees made up of educators, industry leaders, and governors. (See appendix 3.)

Finance/Strategy

W.G.U. started with $100,000 from each member state; now it relies on corporate partnerships and donations to keep afloat. The university gets much of its money as donations from private companies whose employees take the university's courses. WGU originally charged a $30 fee for each course, but now receives a percentage of each student's tuition, with the rest going to the institution through which the course is offered.

The university has 22 corporate and foundation partners with its newest partners including Convergys, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Marriott, Oracle, SCT and Qwest. These partners join America Online, Apple, AT&T, Cisco Systems, Drake International, IBM, KPMG Consulting, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Novell, Sallie Mae, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sun Microsystems ($285,000), Swartz Foundation, Thomson Learning/Prometric, and 3Com in their support of the university and its mission. These foundations and corporations have invested in the institution because they believe they are helping to create much needed change in higher education. Corporate sponsors see their investments as seed money to grow a new model university that will both be relevant to business demands and a leader in training and education.

WGU had rocky beginnings. One challenge WGU’s administrators and member institutions didn't completely anticipate when the collaboration began is that the novelty of the arrangement itself -- combined with a considerable amount of plain old hype, generated by the governors and members of the Western Governors Association, who were pushing for the creation of the institution -- brought such high expectations that managing them became a problem in its own right.

Nearly two years into operations, only about 200 students had enrolled in WGU degree programs and 150 more students had signed up for individual classes. Western Governors originally anticipated 500 degree-seeking students by the year 2000. Also, the institution advertised that it would have 3,000 students participating in certificate programs and 7,000 in corporate training programs, but by mid-2000, neither of those programs had been developed. Since then, WGU enrollment has increased 150% to 500 students. No figures are available for individual course enrollment.

The biggest hurdle facing WGU officials was the long-awaited accreditation process. By November of 2000, WGU was granted accreditation status by the Inter-Regional Accrediting Committee (IRAC), which is composed of representatives from four regional accrediting agencies. In June of 2001, WGU was finally granted accreditation from the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC).

Because of its unique combination of political support at both the state and federal level, corporate and foundation support, and educational partnerships, WGU has been a leading innovator and thought leader in higher education. Though WGU has had lower than expected enrollment, its corporate sponsors feel that it has had reasonable growth in both programs and students and WGU leadership expects that it will continue to grow.

Update (February 2002)

AOL opened an education portal (AOL Online Campus) in December 2001 that directed AOL subscribers to distance education programs offering degree-offering, career-based and personal-enrichment courses, and Western Governors Universities, among others, has paid a fee to have a link included. Financial terms were not disclosed. In February 2002, WGU announced a scholarship program for Olympian teachers to receive master's degrees in math and technology, although approximately $1.8 million in federal money for WGU is currently threatened by President Bush's request to Congress in February to rescind earmarked funds.

References

• "Anchorage Student Receives Degree from Online University on June 18." WGU News Brief, 13 June 2001. http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/about/release57.html
  
• Arnone, Michael. "America Online Seeks to Steer Subscribers to Distance-Education Providers." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 January 2002. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i20/20a03102.htm
  
• Benhamou, Eric and Samuel H. Smith. "Western Governors University" (An Op-Ed Essay). January 2001.
  
• Burd, Stephen. "Tight Budget Plan for Student Aid Worries Colleges." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 February 2002. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i23/23a02701.htm
  
• Carnevale, Dan. "2 Models for Collaboration in Distance Education." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 May 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i37/37a05301.htm
  
• Carnevale, Dan. "Assessment Takes Center Stage in Online Learning." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 April 2001. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i31/31a04301.htm
  
• Carnevale, Dan. "Legislative Audit Criticizes Western Governors University." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 July 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i06/06a04802.htm
  
• Carnevale, Dan. "Program Seeks Olympic Athletes Who are Teachers and Want to Study Online." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 February 2002. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i24/24a02702.htm
  
• "Collaborative Efforts in Distance Education May Not Be Good Models for the Future" (Letters to the Editor). The Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 June 2000. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i42/42b00301.htm
  
• "Getting a Degree Without Going to Class: Distance Learning and Competency Exams" (Letters to the Editor). The Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 May 1999. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i38/38b00301.htm
  
• "National American University Partners with Western Governors University." WGU News Brief, 8 August 2001. http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/about/release63.html
  
• "Western Governors University Earns Accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council." WGU News Brief, 13 June 2001. http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/about/release58.html
  
• "Western Governors University Reports Great Progress." WGU News Brief, 23 February 2001. http://www.wgu.edu/wgu/about/release54.html
  
• "Western Governors University: Who Does What." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 February 1998. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-22.dir/wgu.htm
  
• WGU Student Handbook.
  
• Young, Jeffrey R. "A Virtual Student Teaches Himself." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 May 1999. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i35/35a03101.htm