I'm Still Talking About My WGU Experience—Here's Why
By Jackie Lavorgna, WGU Alum
The higher education industry faces unprecedented levels of disruption from shifting student needs and expectations, advancements in technology, and emerging questions about relevance of degrees to workforce needs. Students at many higher education institutions are stuck in rigid term structures and formulaic, time-bound courses. They’re struggling to have prior experience and learnings validated in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence (AI) can produce research reference lists or an entire paper’s worth of content in seconds, requiring minimal to no input from students, and institutional policies are struggling to keep up with technological advances. Externally, employers are trying to hire for specific skills and are getting mired in a sea of applications and ambiguity where they can’t discern applicants’ actual skill attainment.
How WGU’s Unique Model Combats Today’s Pressures
WGU’s competency-based education (CBE) model has the capability to transform the education industry at large and address these mounting pressures by offering authentic assessments where students demonstrate mastery of in-demand skills, and enabling students to directly leverage their past learnings and experience.
I chose WGU for my MBA because I loved the idea of being able to move at my own pace. The hallmarks of most higher education institutions, from rigid term dates a few times a year to strict syllabus-governed deadlines, haven’t changed much within the industry.
Built-In Flexibility from Day One
What fascinated me about WGU was the ability to start on the first day of any month and sit for an assessment on the day that I determined I was ready, as opposed to a date pre-populated in a syllabus. In practice, this model helped me build confidence as a student by putting me in the driver’s seat to decide when I was ready for the assessment. Building in flexibility, from term dates to assessment dates, positions the modern student juggling a host of priorities to set the right pace for their academic journey.
This flexibility was beneficial throughout my learning experience and proved transformative in unexpected ways. I felt like my past experiences related to the subject matter were validated and appreciated by the flexibility of the model, an aspect that is essential for supporting adult students. I dove deeply into content where I was green and leveraged a wide array of WGU’s resources and services to build knowledge and test capability.
For areas that my previous degree had covered thoroughly, I moved faster, celebrating the ability to set my own pace. When considering that many online students bring past college credit and/or work experience, a model that acknowledges and values that prior learning is essential for an excellent student experience.
I found the objective assessments to be particularly interesting in my program. WGU’s objective assessments include leveraging a remote proctoring service that confirms your identity through government-issued identification, reviews your immediate workspace to affirm that it is a clean testing environment, and monitors your desktop applications during the test to ensure a distraction-free experience. This felt a bit intense the first time, but I appreciated the commitment to test integrity. With recent advances in generative AI bringing new challenges for evaluating the origin of written assignments, WGU’s objective assessments demonstrate verifiable, authentic student outcomes.
A Tool Connecting Competencies to Jobs
Competencies are at the core of WGU’s model. WGU recently brought this to the next level with the Achievement Wallet announced in fall 2025. The Achievement Wallet documents skills and helps students see how their attained skills align with real-world jobs, unearth gaps to those roles, and explore ways to close those gaps. In considering the current economic landscape with low hire rates and deep competition exacerbated by AI, companies are both overwhelmed with applications and struggling to discern which candidates are truly qualified. WGU offers an alternative language that can bring credibility and clarity to a chaotic landscape.
WGU Leads the Way
Six years after finishing my MBA at WGU, I’m a strategist specializing in long-term strategic planning and strategic foresight. I see WGU’s model focused on skills and competencies not as an alternative but as a critical, inevitable evolution in higher education. The question isn’t whether higher education should adopt competency-based models – it’s how quickly institutions can adapt to meet the needs of students and employers before they’re left behind.
