Has anyone done their MBA through Western Governors University? I'm giving them a long hard look and this looks like a program I might like to do.
OK, if not an MBA, has anyone done ANY degree program with WGU? If so, what do you think were the pros/cons of the program? Would you recommend WGU to others?
I do remember someone on this board in the past that has done the WGU MBA. Search back far enough I think you will find the posts. If I remember correctly, that person spoke pretty highly of the program. I think they require you to take the CMBA certification exam (which I was not a fan of, since graduates of unaccredited programs were allowed to take that exam as well.)
IIRC, they dropped it a while ago. check out the jobs & degrees section of the techexam.net forum here: IT Jobs / Degrees Forums This website has, by far, the most WGU students that I have seen. Someone is probably in the WGU MBA program over there.
I'm in the MS ISA program at WGU. I would say that overall it is a decent school, but I recently had some issues with what I consider a poorly designed writing assignement. With WGU, you have an individual mentor, one or more course mentors, and then the shadowy people behind the grading system (TaskStream). I had my assignment submission rejected and the grader's comments really didn't explain what I needed to do to improve it. Neither my mentor nor the course mentor were much help in explaining it either. I ended up passing it on the third submission. In a more traditional college, I would have just taken a C for the assignement and moved on, but that's not possible in WGU's model. I can't speak to anything on the MBA side, but one positive for the InfoSec track is the certification-based courses. The last one I took (Certified Ethical Hacker) had some really good, in-depth information that helped me to pass the exam on the first try.
I may try a B&M program in my local area for a graduate program, but if that doesn't work out I would definitely consider WGU. I'm reading more positives than negatives about them, and I like that as soon as you master the material you're on to the next ask.
A coworker of mine is working on the MBA at WGU. He is taking his time but says that it is hard. He is a very smart guy but has a lot of family responsibilities so that might affect his completion time. He is happy with the program and the rigor. I was strongly considering it but decided against it based on the lack of graded credits. If you ever want to teach, this will probably be a problem. NCU and Nichols college offer a self paced MBA. I like self paced programs that do not require student-student interaction so that is why I chose NCU. Nichols is brick and mortar so that might give it an advantage over NCU which is purely online. ENMU and WNMU have the lowest costs and AMU offers monthly start times. Keep in mind some MBA programs require foundation courses that you can CLEP out of or waive if you have an undergrad in business.
I'm nearly finished with a BS-IT at WGU. Given that WGU uses "competency units" rather than credit hours, it can be tough (not impossible) to transfer out. My suggestion to folks is to finish WGU if they start it. Its two biggest advantages: 1) self-paced, 2) low cost. I've heard lots of good things about the WGU MBA. Surprisingly so, over the last year or so. It seems they dropped the CMBA some time back, so that's not been an issue. (As an aside, I think the CMBA is a good idea in principle, it was just poorly executed.)
