What is the hiring process like at Western Governors University?

- Individual contributors / student-facing employees really care about the success of students - Benefits are good - Lower tier teams are very supportive

- Leadership is very out of touch with the work employees do - Extreme siloing within the organization - Very call-center driven, not what one expects after earning graduate degrees and doctorates - Culture of fear and retaliation exists to discourage ruffling any feathers over poor knee-jerk decisions by leadership - Mandatory RTO to SLC even though people never worked in UT to begin with - Receiving weekly announcements about new leaders being hired in UT that lack any real credentials in academia, but fit the profile of an elder in UT - Got rid of DEI and diversity has nose-dived since they forced RTO to Utah - INSANELY metrics-based. Employees are held responsible for poor decisions of leadership that cause a drop in student outcomes - Very high stress as a result of unreachable metrics - Raises are insultingly low, not even keeping with inflation some years. - Leadership makes big decisions on the fly and will pivot to some new initiative before results are even in from the last one - Since RTO, there is no opportunities for advancement unless you move to Utah.

Super easy interview process and nice people.

I don't have any cons right now about the company.

Remote… well it used to be at least

Forcing workforce back into office. After 4 years of hiring all over the country, most remote workers are now being told that within the next 2 years they need to relocate to salt lake city in order to maintain employment.

Remote position, relatively flexible schedule options, good equipment, supportive onboarding peer coach. Depending on your personal/family needs it could be a good fit.

• It's essentially a call center position. • I was offered $10,000 less than quoted by the recruiter. • Low pay • The background check company expects you to do their job. I kept receiving emails while on vacation. I provided them my employers website, address, and phone numbers. They said a phone number wasn’t operational, so they wanted me to send my financial records. I called the number I provided them over the weekend and directly reached the company. If I had kept my paystubs, I still wouldn’t have provided them. It was a hassle dealing with them. • Your computer will not be configured when you receive it, so you better be tech savvy or have someone with an IT background that can help you set up your system. • Onboarding used to be 1 month. Now it's 12 days so it's very stressful and mostly watching videos for hours on end, plus there's a lot of quizzes/tests and the onboarding material hasn't been updated to coincide with the tests so finding correct answers can be difficult and time consuming. Onboarding was a miserable experience. • Don't give a 2 week notice because like most companies these days they will let you go and shorten your departure date and thus your paycheck. • I had to drive out of town to find a location to return my equipment, so I was out my time and gas costs. • When you depart the company the exit interview company will hound you. I got emailed and called multiple times after I left, so I eventually just blocked them. • They recently made some positions RTO so upward mobility is limited unless you’re willing to move to Utah.

Some very genuine, hardworking, kind, smart people, especially at the "individual contributor" levels. Unfortunately, half of them won't be around soon. Ironically, I do like the mental health benefits! Something like 10 free sessions + 10 free life coach sessions.

Where to start! The recent Amazonification of WGU has been a long-lasting nightmare, and I truly hope the top leadership changes as soon as possible. WGU 5, 10, 15 years ago was a completely different place - and not just because of its now-large size. Trust in leadership across the university is totally gone. Employees are not valued. The dollar is valued. You WILL be gaslit on a monthly basis during the emotional, sectarian All Hands meetings. You will be told things definitively about the university's goals that will simply not be true two months later. This happened with RTO topics many times, and with AI rollouts. DEI was silently and brutally dismantled and every new hire seems to be white LDS, of course based in Salt Lake City. I have nothing against that community, but the lack of diversity for a nationwide university is a problem for a list of reasons too long to get into here. I would discourage people with disabilities to work here, again you won't be valued and seen. My salary was lower than market rate with no raises for years, in part due to RTO - a policy which makes no sense since most employees were never "in office" to begin with. I will cherish my good times at WGU and miss the affirming, stable, and positive place it used to be.

I have worked in 3 different departments during my time at WGU, and I have loved all of my direct teams. People are kind and understanding and do their best for our students. I have also had excellent managers who supported my career aspirations and helped me get experience I needed for a position I was looking for. Because of these people I have worked with, I will be sad to leave WGU when the time comes.

The focus on ensuring student success without actually ensuring student learning is concerning. I've worked for several online universities that went bust because they started focusing more on making sure students graduated, rather than making sure they were learning. Upper leadership is extremely out of touch and does not understand what we do or how we do it. Many feel like all of the support and dedication to inclusive practices were not real since the new Return to Office policy was announced without any support for its implementation. If you do work here, do not start out in the lower end of the salary range and expect to move up in that range and position. You will have to get a new position to negotiate for a higher salary.

Ability to work from home partially

New hires are stuck on a horrible shift 1-10PM Ridiculous attendance policy my entire group I was hired with got fired within 2 months - you cant be more than 5 minutes late without getting an attendance occurrence once you’ve had 8 your done. The management doesn’t care they’re very detached from their employees. Lack of training, they throw you on the phone after 5 days with very little insight on what you’re doing.

Some great co-workers. Most will snitch on you.

We were told our positions were fully remote. They even closed offices. Now they are saying you must relocate to SLC or tough luck. This is after our department, External Comms, had one of the best Fiscal Years for enrollments and graduations, even though a lot of us are remote. Imagine that! However, even though Student on-time completion is starting to tank (not our department), those student-facing positions will remain Remote. Huh? What's that? That doesn't make sense to you, either, does it? Well, welcome to Scott Pulsipher's mind. Chaos is too simple a word for what WGU will experience for the next two years, and I've been here for five years. Stay far, far, far away until Scott Pulsipher is forced to step down by the board and someone who cares about our students and employees replaces him. It's probably not going to happen, but we'll see.

great product: Wgu is a great school for lots of students. Nice to promote something you support remote: A remote position is really nice in a lot of ways

call center- its advirtised as a councilor who guides students in career decisions and gets them enrolled. Make know mistake. Its a call center job. The monitor and review everything. How long your on the queue, how long your calls are, if you say exact phrases each call, if you close your call a certain way, if you ask certain questions, etc etc. pay- you only get higher pay if you have good reviews( most only leave reviews if there upset, and if your calls are done exactly how they want it. Its not really a very good way to show apprection for lots of student you help. Almost hard to get a good pay. workload each day is not factored in. toxic perfectionsim: Like other call centers they are perfectinistic. They do not offer freedom and will monitor and correct you weekly. You will have 30 min meetings were your manager will bring up lots of little details your not doing well enough. calls to short, not enough outbound, et . Basically there is not a lot of trust. Its really rough if critisim ways you down. advancment- They do hire within wgu but you need a masters or 5+years in most job applications. Or both. Most EC who stick around have a really hard time advancming unless you have a masters. Even then one person told me they left wgu and then got hired because know one was hiring enrollment councilors): I Have been really dissapointed working here. I see how much wgu helps students and other positions but the enrollment coucnilor position in not one they treat fairly or with respect. I would NOT recommend this job to anyone unless you have worked call center jobs before and enjoyed them.