Western Governors University: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I interrupt my current rant on the liberal arts for the following commentary:

The recent audit of Western Governors University by the U.S. Department of Education Office of the Inspector General is a perfect illustration of what is wrong with regulation in higher education in America.  The audit concludes that WGU failed to meet requirements related to student-faculty interaction and so should return some $700 million it received in federal student aid.  The details of the audit are less concerning than the basis for the findings.  WGU has been a leader in providing distance education and in employing Competency Based Education to assess student progress.  The curriculum is largely self-paced, and students are assessed based on achieving specified outcomes.  This approach greatly reduces traditional semester-based time constraints and burdensome seat-time requirements that are unrelated to, but are used to measure, student success in traditional higher education. It provides the flexibility demanded by today’s student, who is older, likely employed, and has family responsibilities.

In other words, WGU has implemented a model of education that emulates the rest of society.  It is a just-in-time education delivery system that mirrors how society in general is organized.  Take, for example, our ability to access services and goods provided by Amazon or most banking institutions. This access is achieved on our own schedules, and we accomplish our interactions through varying levels of interaction with professional individuals. We don’t judge our success in these dealings by the level of interaction. We judge success (both ours and that of the institutions) on whether or not we achieve our outcomes.


The efficacy of institutions of higher education cannot be measured by how often students interface with faculty or how many courses are offered in a given format.  The mark of success is to be found in student outcomes. The model is less the point that its effectiveness. WGU did not break the mold.  In fact, it is forcing higher education into the current mold of American society as a whole. This is a good deed.  And we all know that no good deed goes unpunished.

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