If You Dropped Out of College...

Jan 19, 2008 · 2 min read  ·
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For those of you who dropped out of college and want to finish your undergrad degree, you may want to consider the online university, Western Governors University. I'm sharing this on my blog because I actually shared the URL with many of my tech friends who dropped out. I found an ad for WGU in some tech magazine (maybe TechNet?) and it made me curious. Here's what I found:

  • Its accredited by the same org that accredits traditional universities (such as BYU), Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. It also earned some other national accreditation and was the first online and first non-traditional program to do so.
  • Members of Sun and HP are on the board of trustees and a ton of big companies are listed as corporate collaborators including AT&T, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Qwest, Sun and HP.
  • It's only about $5,000 or $6000 a year
  • The CEO of Google said: "Google has pioneered the idea of access to information. The reason Google thinks WGU is such a good idea is because WGU has pioneered the concept of competency- based education whenever you want it."
  • You get a bunch of certifications while you are at it.

WGU offers undergrad and graduate degrees in IS, teaching, nursing and business.

Another alternative for those wanting a Masters in IS is Carnegie Mellon's Distance Learning program. It seems pretty awesome.