This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Imagine watching prime time TV and suddenly seeing Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon appearing in a 30-second ad – and it isn’t even an election year.
Instead of touting his own candidacy, the governor is pushing a new, private nonprofit university, a potential competitor to more established public and private schools in the state, that wants to persuade tens of thousands of Missourians that they should complete the college career they left behind years ago.
It’s Western Governors University, formed back in 1995 by a group of governors in Western states – not including Missouri – to lure would-be students with what has proven to be three attractive pitches:
- All of the courses are taught online, to fit with adults’ busy schedules.
- Degrees are granted based on what students know, not how long they have spent in class, so knowledge gained through jobs or otherwise can speed the path to graduation.
- For a flat-fee tuition of $6,000 a year, students can take as many courses as they think they can handle.
“It’s designed to meet the needs of real people with real lives,” Nixon said of WGU during his State of the State address in January. “You can take your tests after work, on weekends or at night, after the kids are asleep. Instead of paying tuition by the credit hour, students can take as much coursework as they want for a flat rate. And how quickly you earn your degree depends on how quickly you master the subject matter: You advance at your own pace.”
An estimated 750,000 Missourians have some college credits but dropped out before reaching graduation day. Western Governors University Missouri can help raise the number of residents in the state with post-secondary degrees or certificates from its current 37 percent to Nixon’s goal of 60 percent, say its supporters.
Robert Mendenhall, president of WGU, said the university has established presences in Indiana, Washington state and Texas, and he is confident those positive experiences can be replicated in Missouri.
“Competency-based education means you really are going to use your knowledge rather than time spent in class as the basis of getting a degree,” he told the Beacon. “That makes so much sense on the face of it that it should be the normal way to structure education. Eventually, I think we will move that way, but it’s hard to produce change in higher education because of very longstanding traditions.”
For the most part, the arrival of WGU Missouri has been welcomed in the state by public colleges and universities that might seem to be its competitors.
“We see it as an option, not a threat,” says Donna Dare, vice chancellor for student and academic affairs at St. Louis Community College.
But not everyone is so happy to see WGU ramp up its presence in Missouri. Carole Basile, dean of the school of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis – who is competing for students in one of the four academic areas that WGU also offers – wonders why the governor would be so actively promoting a new private entry when state support for existing public schools continues to erode.
“We used to be state-funded,” she says, “then we were state-supported, now we’re state-located. For the governor to do this, to bring one more institution into the state to compete, I think we’re cutting off our nose to spite our face.”
What is WGU Missouri?
Prospective students who log onto the WGU Missouri website will see that the school offers degrees in four areas: business, information technology, health professions and teacher education.
If they pass an assessment and are admitted – and four out of five students who apply get in, officials say – they can sign up for as many courses as they think they can handle. Tuition of $3,000 covers a six-month term, which can begin on the first of any month.
Each student is assigned two types of mentors. One is for each individual class, to help guide students through the course material. The other is an overall adviser, to make sure students are on track and answer any questions they may have. Students and their mentors have regular contact, with conversations coming more frequently early in a student’s career or if problems arise.
Course mentors usually have a doctorate in the subject matter; coursework is graded not by a student’s mentor but by a separate staff with at least a master’s degree in the field.
Classes at WGU have no lectures. Instead, students are assigned reading material and other coursework, perhaps even projects with other students – which they will work on remotely. Students can reach each other through chat rooms, and mentors are generally available when needed.
For courses like teacher education and health professionals, which need in-person training as well as online course work, that type of experience is provided as well, WGU officials say.
The average age of WGU students is 37, college officials say. About two-thirds of them are working full-time. More than 90 percent have completed at least some college.
Mendenhall says the school’s rates of retention and of students making satisfactory academic progress have improved markedly in recent years, and its rate of default on student loans is comparable with that of state university systems.
He said the average debt load is usually smaller than that of students coming out of more traditional schools, for two reasons: WGU’s tuition is lower than that on most campuses, and its older students don’t tend to borrow money for living expenses like many younger students do.
Using the slogan “the University of You,” WGU tries to emphasize a student’s individualized learning plan and how its mentors can help design a program that a student can finish in a timely manner and can use to move ahead in the world of work.
“Starting an online degree program is exciting and exhilarating, but it can also be scary,” its website says. “Don’t worry; at WGU you’ll never be alone. You’ll have a dedicated partner in your education — an online university with a personal touch and a commitment to making your experience a perfect fit for your personal and professional growth.”
With tuition set at $6,000 a year, for as many courses as a student wants to take, Western Governors might seem to be a good option not only for adults who previously have dropped out of college but also for high school graduates looking for an economical route to a degree. Mendenhall says the school has had some younger students apply, and they make up about 2-3 percent of its student body, but he says the school is not always the best fit for them.
“Most traditional age students want a college experience,” he said. “They want to go away and live away from home and have a different social experience. This is probably more appealing for someone who doesn’t need that social experience, someone who says I already have a family and am working – I just need an education.
“We generally are talking about students 75 percent of whom would be classified as underserved, either low-income or minority students or students who are the first generation in their family going to college or rural students who don’t always have access to higher education.”
And the competency-based aspect works better for students with some life and workplace experience, he added.
“If you have been in the workforce for 10 or 20 years,” Mendenhall said, “you really don’t want to be told you have to take basic 101 courses with 20-year-old students, because you already know that stuff. This requires a lot of independent work. It requires self-discipline. You don’t get credit for sitting through class. You have to demonstrate competency on assessments. We’re careful to screen them and make sure it’s a right fit for them.”
Why a separate Missouri operation?
Because it operates nationwide, Western Governors already has about 450 students and 260 alumni in Missouri. (The university says it has enrolled 40,000 since it began.) But Mendenhall says that branding a new version like the one that is getting started in the state helps raise the school’s profile.
“If you walk down the street and ask people about WGU,” he said, “you would be lucky to find anyone who has heard of it. When we come to a state, we put people on the ground and we invest dollars in building a brand so more students are aware of this opportunity.”
He said the school will soon be hiring a chancellor who is familiar with higher education in Missouri as well as faculty in the state and others who will do more outreach for Missouri students.
“From the state’s perspective,” Mendenhall said, “the governor wants to increase the number of graduates in Missouri significantly, and we become a partner in helping to increase that number. We’ll integrate our enrollment and graduation data with the rest of the state system.”
He said Western Governors’ experience in other states has helped refine the process so that Missouri will get as great a benefit as possible.
“We’ve learned that it works,” he said. “It’s been really successful. In Indiana, two and a half years ago, we started with 260 students. Today, there are over 3,000 and we’ve now graduated over 500 who are successfully in the workforce, have updated their jobs skills and are better providing for their family.
“We’ve learned the pattern to successfully partner with the community colleges. We have statewide agreements in the other states with community colleges, and that’s a really good thing for those community college graduates.”
Startup costs for WGU Missouri will be paid primarily from a community development block grant of up to $4 million, plus $750,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After startup, the school will require no financial support from the state. Mendenhall said WGU will need about 2,500 students to be self-sustaining – a goal he expects the school to reach in a couple of years.
To establish the WGU presence in Missouri, Nixon signed an executive orderdirecting the state’s Department of Higher Education to eliminate barriers to its operation and integrate its programs with those of other schools in the state.
How sure is he that Missouri can match the effort that WGU has made in Indiana and elsewhere?
He told a news conference in Kansas City:
“We figured if 3,000 Hoosiers can do it, we can do it in the Show-Me State.”