WGU – a college for people like us…
Webhosting entrepreneurs spend a lot of time online. We work weird hours, day and night, to get the job done. Western Govenors’ University works well for people like us. With WGU it’s all about results. How long you sit in a classroom doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding the material and can you do the work?
Online education has been steadily growing. But you need to watch out… Many of the names you’ve heard are for profits (nothing wrong with that in itself), that worry more about selling courses. There’s the problem… a typical large name accredited (we’ll talk more about that in a minute) online school that’s not part of a state university system charges upwards of $40 to $50 thousand dollars for a undergrad degree. Let’s take the University of Phoenix, most courses run 3 credits $ 530 per credit hour plus a $85 fee for online ‘resources’, or $1675 per course. To satisfy the 120 credit hour requirement (124 in Kansas), that means 40 course… or a grand total $67,000 assuming you came into it with no credits… That’s a chunk of change. The value of a degree is substantial, but that’s a big hole to dig out of from the start.
And there’s the time requirements… Usually you can’t take more than 16 hours or so at a time. That will take years to complete the degree! And if you’re working at the same time, it’s even slower.
But there’s another way… the WGU way. I’m currently enrolled in their IT – Software Development program. I started last October 1st. To date I have completed 41 comptency units (their equivalent to the credit). I’m working on another 17 before the end of my term at the end of February. If you were paying attention, you noticed that’s a long term – 6 months. WGU is a continuous enrollment school. Terms start every month on the 1st and go for 6 months. Since you’re working on your courses individually with the help of others in the course as well as course mentors, you get to set the pace. WGU requires you take 16 credits and pass 12 of those every semester to maintain “Satisfactory Academic Progress” or “SAP”. You have to also pass 2/3rd of everything you take… Fortunately, you can add courses as you need. So you start out with the required 16 CU’s at the begining of the term (which figuring in breaks and such as almost twice as long as a normal semester), then as you complete courses you add others in.
Courses are divided up into ‘Objective’ and ‘Performance’ Assessments. For objective assessments, you will take a final exam after completing the course work (or are able to show you are ready). You will go to a testing facility available at Prometric, most universities, and many libraries for proctoring. You will be given a certain amount of time to complete the exam and take it online under the supervision of the proctor. If you’ve ever taken an industry certification exam, that’s what these are like. Actually many of the IT courses use industry certifications as their assessment from known names like Microsoft, CompTIA, CIW, Sun, etc. A quick word about industry certs at WGU… WGU has decided to place a limit of 4 attempts on an industry cert (1st 2 tries are included in tuition:) !) afterwards, you will need to choose another degree program. I support this move. It prevents people from going over and over until they pass, in something they apparently are prepared for… but some others were upset about it.
Performance evaluations are another matter… it’s all about the work. You will be given a set of tasks to complete. For example, you may be asked to complete a slide presentation, write a paper, and perform an experiment complete with journals, etc. and submit that to graders. They will use a rubric to evaluate your work and tell you if any revisions need to occur. There are 2 types of tasks, the ‘required’ tasks are more like course-work and can be submitted multiple times. You’ll do this as you go through the course text. Then after you’ve completed those, the final task(s) will be opened for you. These are the what you’re actually evaluated on… You can only revise them once. So you have to pay attention to what you’re doing. Afterwards, a different task is used for the course.
One of the things you need to pay attention to in looking for online college degrees is the school’s accreditation. There are too many ‘degree mills’ out there, and you won’t be well served by them. Others, like the big names, do have accreditation from the DECT – a nationally recognized accreditation authority. There are also many other accreditation bodies, many of whom have no authority to do so see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecognized_accreditation_associations_of_higher_learning … The “gold standard” though is “Regional accreditation” (the same you’re local state university uses) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation. WGU is DETC AND regionally accredited through the Northwest Commission. Additionally for teachers and nurses, WGU holds NCATE and CCNE respectively. Actually WGU is the first and only exclusively online university to hold NCATE accreditation. The CCNE accreditation helped me getting approved for tuition reimbursement actually… Just be careful when choosing a school, get DETC at a minimum and preferably regional.
Lastly, let’s talk about cost… WGU has a fixed cost of just $2890 per 6 month term, plus a few fees for library, etc. So figure about $3000 a semester – it varies a little with lab fees, etc. To use me as an example, I’ve already completed 41 CUs, so my cost per CU (credit) is already down to ($3000/41) under $75. And if I complete the others in time, it will drop to just over $50/credit. I’ve found no other university that even comes close… Not to mention my goal is to go from zero credits (it’s all too old to count anymore really) to done in a year to a year and half. So my total cost will be $6 to 9 thousand, instead of $50 to $60 thousand! And I’ll have TEN industry certifications to boot!
If you decide you want to apply, email me at rob -at- lagniappeinternet.com and I can get you the application fee waived… Disclosure: I’d also get a Amazon credit for $50 or so (I forget the amount) as well towards books… BTW, most books are included or eBooks. If you want printed copies you have to buy them, and for a couple (2 I think in my case) you will have to buy books period. Those are not included in tuition, but that’s pretty normal.
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Robert Porter holds Oracle Certified Professional-Java 6, MCSE, A+, Net+, Project+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration. |
