2024 Gallup Alumni Survey Offers Hope for Higher Ed
At a time when public confidence in higher education is waning, the results of our 2024 Gallup Alumni Survey offer a powerful counter-narrative: Higher education still delivers on its promise as an engine of economic mobility—but only when it’s designed toward that end.
Western Governors University (WGU) was founded to make higher education more accessible, relevant, affordable, and valuable for students across the country. From the beginning, we’ve focused on a single, unifying purpose: improving lives by creating pathways to opportunity. That clarity shapes every decision we make, helping us focus on and invest in designs and practices that increase student learning, persistence, completion, and value; and avoiding or eliminating all that don’t.
And it’s working.
Every year, we partner with Gallup to investigate how effectively WGU is fulfilling its mission by measuring key aspects of our graduates’ lives and comparing those outcomes to bachelor’s degree holders nationally. According to the newly released 2024 Gallup Alumni Survey:
69% of WGU alumni strongly agree their degree was worth the cost—nearly double the national average.
Respondents who graduated between 2019 and 2023 and were working full time during their education reported an average income of $75,000 while enrolled, and an average income gain of $15,000 at the time of the survey in 2024.
75% of alumni aged 25+ say they gained job-relevant skills, compared to 60% of national alumni.
73% of WGU alumni age 25+ are considered “thriving” in their lives, per Gallup’s wellbeing index—18 points higher than their national peers.
These outcomes aren’t the result of incremental improvements. They reflect a fundamental shift in how we think about the role of a university serving a diversity of learners amid an evolving workforce and opportunity landscape. And they reflect what we know to be true: That talent is universal; opportunity is abundant; and everyone, if given the chance, has something big to contribute.
Guided by these core truths, we’ve introduced innovations that support outcomes like those captured in our alumni report, and we continue to innovate to increase the likelihood that every student, no matter their background, reaches graduation and improves their economic prospects through a rewarding career.
It’s why we chose to leverage competency-based education, allowing learners to progress through their coursework as quickly as they are able to demonstrate mastery, often saving them time and money. It’s why we pair every student with their own mentor to help them navigate life’s ups and downs and reach graduation. It’s why we offer career-aligned programs, co-developed with employers and industry experts to ensure job readiness. And it’s why we leverage technology to make learning more flexible and personalized.
But while these strategies work well at WGU, we don’t believe our way is the only way. Institutions face distinct challenges and serve different communities. What matters most is staying anchored to why most students say they pursue higher education—to improve their career outcomes—and letting that guide everything from design to delivery.
Unfortunately, too many learners today aren’t experiencing that kind of value. According to a survey from Hult International Business School, 77% of recent grads said they learned more in their first six months on the job than in their entire four-year degree; 75% of HR leaders believe colleges are failing to prepare students for the workplace; and despite a nationwide talent shortage nearly 9 in 10 employers say they actively avoid hiring recent graduates.
Given these outcomes, it’s not hard to understand why belief in the value of a postsecondary credential dropped among adults without a college degree by 4 to 6 percentage points over the past year, according to data from Gallup and Lumina Foundation.
The challenges plaguing our higher education system are many and complex, but I would argue they center around one primary theme: Higher education has been engineered beyond its primary objective. Colleges and universities contend with competing priorities, established infrastructure and budget commitments, and conflicting incentives that can favor selectivity, constrain enrollment, increase costs, reduce innovation and flexibility, and thus perpetuate legacy models. Layer in regulatory prescriptions and cultural nostalgia, and change can feel challenging to the point of impossible.
And yet, I’ve seen firsthand that education can be the most powerful catalyst for upward mobility and personal transformation. Not “college” in the traditional sense, but education in its most basic definition: The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities. Education expands opportunity, builds self-reliance, and enables individuals to lead self-determined lives. And when individuals thrive, families, communities, and society benefit.
Institutions like WGU are showing that new and better ways are possible. By rethinking how we serve today’s diverse learners, we can restore trust in higher education and reestablish it as what it was always meant to be: a bridge to opportunity.
