New Report Shows The Success Of WGU Academy’s College Readiness Program

A new study shows that an online college readiness program is effective in helping college students make better academic progress in their first year of study.  The program is WGU Academy, which was launched by Western Governors University (WGU) in 2019 to address the college-readiness gap faced by an increasing number of students.

WGU Academy operates as a separate, nonprofit unit under the WGU umbrella and offers courses designed to help aspiring, but underprepared, college students get up to speed for college success. (Full disclosure: I serve on the WGU Missouri Advisory Board.)

The report, Improving Student Outcomes Through Noncognitive Skills Training: A Comparison of Academy Graduates’ and Non-Academy WGU Students’ First-Year Academic Progress, is one of the first assessments of the impact of the Academy, which began enrolling students in May, 2019. It was authored by two researchers - Reshma Gouravajhala and Chelsea Barnett – associated with WGU Academy.

WGU Academy

WGU Academy features several of the characteristics that have made WGU a leader in on-line education, especially for adults who want to return to college.

• Academy students enroll in online courses using the competency-based format associated with the WGU model.
• Students pay a $150 monthly fee rather than a full semester of tuition, and WGU Academy recently started awarding scholarships to help high-need students with some or all of the costs. The average time for completion is three to four months, but that depends on the pace at which a given student proceeds through the material. At that expected completion rate, the cost of the Academy would be $600 or less.
• Along with its dual focus on competence and noncognitive skills, the Academy’s courses are customized to the needs and abilities of individual students.

The basic curriculum typically consists of at least two courses. All students take the Program for Academic and Career Advancement (PACA), an experiential-learning curriculum that helps students discover what’s most important to them, what’s holding them back from achieving success, and how to address those challenges. The course boosts student confidence and builds the coping skills crucial to academic persistence and completion.

In addition, students take a writing class to help them hone written communication skills, and some take a math course, the area where many students struggle to be ready for college-level content. Additional courses in general education or the introductory classes required in a student’s chosen field of study are also offered.

As of March 1, 2021, WGU Academy had 3,516 active students enrolled, and through that date, it had seen 2,413 students complete the program.

 The Study and Its Results

The study compared the first-year academic performance of 869 students who completed WGU academy before they entered WGU to a cohort of 36,141 WGU enrollees who did not participate in the Academy. All the students in the analyses enrolled in undergraduate degree programs at WGU between August 2019 and September 2020.

Academic performance was measured by an outcome called On-Time-Progress (OTP), which for undergraduate students is defined as completing at least 12 competency units every term.

• The OTP for academy graduates was 8.7 percentage points higher during their first term at WGU compared to non-Academy students. Even after accounting for gender, military affiliation, first-generation status, minority status, and number of transfer credits, the odds of achieving first-term OTP were substantially increased for Academy graduates versus non-Academy students.
• Additional analyses showed that Academy graduates who were first-generation college students achieved a first term OTP that was 13.9 percentage points higher than first-generation non-Academy students.
• Minority Academy graduates achieved a first-term OTP that was 4.7 percentage points higher relative to their non-Academy counterparts, a difference that was not statistically significant.
• For students who had attended WGU long enough to progress to their second term, Academy graduates achieved a Term 2 OTP that was 11.4 percentage points higher rate than non-Academy students.
• The 869 Academy graduates achieved a first-term OTP that was 15.5 percentage points higher than 208 students who had attended but did not complete the Academy before enrolling at WGU.
• Finally, the researchers looked at the impact of the unique PACA experience alone. The 936 students who completed PACA (regardless of whether they were Academy graduates) achieved a first-term OTP that was 17 percentage points higher than the 141 former students who had enrolled in WGU Academy but did not complete PACA.
• What makes the above differences particularly impressive is that those that were statistically significant remained so even after accounting for gender, first generation status, minority status, military affiliation, and number of transfer credits.

_________

WGU Academy has been planned to be highly scalable. While initially intended to serve students who seek admission to WGU but fail to meet all its requirements, the Academy is becoming available to school districts, universities and other entities that can offer the program to prospective college students who need additional assistance to be successful. Already a few pilot studies of this type of expansion are underway. Should the initiative become more fully scaled, it has the potential to provide college-readiness content and skills to hundreds of thousands of students.

Anyone who studies the challenge of college readiness and the generally abysmal failure of standard remediation strategies (what I’ve previously called higher education’s Hotel California) will recognize the need for a new approach. Standard remediation is far too often a funnel to failure.

Among students in remedial courses at two-year colleges, about 40% never finish them. The corresponding drop-out rate at four-year schools is about 25%. Fewer than a quarter of two-year attendees and slightly more than a third of four-year college students who start in a remedial course complete the gateway course in that field. Only 10% of students in remediation at two-year schools finish their degree in three years; at four-year non-flagship universities, a mere 35% of students who take a remedial class earn a degree after six years. The results are even worse for students from underrepresented backgrounds.

WGU Academy has the potential to pave a broader pathway to college readiness. It’s low-cost, tailored to the individual, and built to go big. Its goal – providing the individualized preparation to help thousands of students bring a college degree within reach – is shared by many college and universities.

“COVID has disrupted education across the country, compounding the barriers that stand between talent and opportunity, especially for historically underserved students,” said Scott Pulsipher, President of WGU. “WGU Academy is proving what the higher ed sector has known for some time—noncognitive skills are an essential part of academic readiness and have a lasting impact on students’ academic and career success. Our early outcomes data will help us catalyze new partnerships with other higher ed institutions and organizations in order to provide pathways to opportunity for many more students.”