WOULD YOU HIRE A WGU GRAD? The WGU model is based on "pass fail" .. exams that decide if a student knows "enough" and coaches whose job it is to get students through the exams. The coaches are not required to have expertise in the subject matter. As a result, WGU degrees just tell an employer that the student has passed by whatever WGU's own standards might be.
Based on a a truly frightening article The Chronicle of Higher Education
WGU may want to worry about its accreditation.
Congress has gotten involved in accrediting online colleges. The motivation in Congress is that “for-profit” companies rake in federal financial aid without any controls of the quality of their “product” .. presumably an educated, employable graduate.
The bad news for WGU is that the focus on “for profit” schools has forced a reexamination of the accreditation standards that allow WGU to function. Questions arisingf from the excesses of the profit making schools has led the U.S. Education Department to recognize that , as we have talked about here in relationship to Western Governors University, these accreditors themselves have very low standards. As long as a “college” lives up to accepted the business practices these agencies really have no way of assessing quality.
The Chronicle article quotes Philip A. Schmidt, associate provost for compliance and accreditation at Western Governors University as saying that accrediting groups treat WGU and its peers like something completely different from classroom learning. Now, “policy makers are asking accreditors to do things that they traditionally have not been doing,” says Michale S. McComis, executive director of the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges “The Department of Education has a role to play, states have a role to play, and we have a role to play,” he says. “Accreditation is not the only line of defense.
Congress, for its part, seems more concerned with the large numbers of students dropping out of online programs. Again WGU has placed its resources into retention of students, the university’s “faculty”: act as coaches rather than as teachers.
The Chronicle goes on to speculate that renewal of the Higher Education Act in 2013 may remove the role of accreditors as gatekeepers for federal financial student aid. That would,remove the impression that “:accreditation” implies a standard of quality.
Ms. Manning, of the North Central accrediting group says:
“One important thing to remember, which is often forgotten, is that it is not the case that accreditation is the only thing that stands between an institution and access to federal student financial aid, Accreditation is a gatekeeper but not the sole gatekeeper.”