Western Governors University is a fully accredited online university, and the largest in the country, with more than 180,000 enrolled students as of fall 2023. The school has locations across the country and is opening up a new Southeast hub in Raleigh to support operations on the coast.

Ben Coulter, Southeast regional director and chancellor of WGU in North Carolina, said that although WGU is a four-year university that grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he doesn’t feel a sense of competition with similar colleges like NC State. Coulter said he felt the schools serve unique niches of the student population.

“We have a very unique focus on underserved and underrepresented populations. Our curricular structure and our academic program structure is uniquely different,” Coulter said.

WGU offers degrees and certificates in business, information technology, cybersecurity, nursing and education. Coulter said their programs are intended to produce students who are workforce-ready, which fits the needs of their students, a majority of whom are over the age of 25.

WGU already has offices in Phoenix and Austin alongside its headquarters in Salt Lake City. The new hub in Raleigh is being opened to provide a center for East Coast operations. Raleigh is an attractive location because of its proximity to so many large universities, a central airport and a generally centralized location on the East Coast. 

The new Raleigh office will house educational support, technology support, product development, procurement services and other noneducational programs. The current plan will see about 300 positions being housed in the office.

“A lot of our jobs that will be at this new Raleigh Eastern Hub office will be technology-related, and there’s a very deep talent pool within the research triangle and Raleigh for us to hire out of,” Coulter said. 

Coulter said WGU will feed its resources back into the area with graduates trained in fields like cybersecurity and IT, the programs with the highest enrollment in North Carolina. 

“Our graduates can jump right to work, and have a lot of opportunities to not only better themselves and their careers, but to fill in high need areas within our state,” Coulter said. 

WGU is formally affiliated with North Carolina as of 2017, as are 13 other states across the country. The affiliation granted them one-time funding from the General Assembly and a promise to maintain a close relationship with the state. Coulter said they are aiming to contribute to the state and fill fields struggling to hire, like cybersecurity, teaching and nursing.

“Having a state affiliate here only anchors us,” Coulter said. “Kind of like having the flag planted in North Carolina for our university, and to have as many partnerships as we can with other institutions.”

WGU partners with local community colleges to offer students opportunities to transfer into four-year programs with as many credits as possible. This allows students with associate’s degrees the ability to continue school, no matter where their location or their ability to go to school full-time.

“Community colleges are very much about nurturing students locally, and we totally understand that,” Coulter said. “We have the same model of nurturing them, looking out for their best interests and supporting them, whatever walk of life they’re at that point.”

Coulter, who worked at Western Carolina University for 10 years, said their partnerships are usually introduced to fill a blind spot in a university’s curriculum. With the plethora of educational opportunities in North Carolina, there may not be a need for a direct partnership with public universities like NC State. 

Awfeed Isho, a WGU graduate working in cybersecurity in Idaho, earned his M.S. in cybersecurity and information assurance in 2022. He decided to try WGU because there were no cybersecurity programs at his local universities. Isho had concerns about the lack of structure in online school, but he found the flexibility worked very well for him.

“It builds inside you that mentally of ownership, some sort of responsibility, because now you are required to finish something and no one is telling you how to do it, when to do it and it’s completely up to you,” Isho said.

Isho finished the program in nine months, debt-free. As an alumnus, he has found that employers respect WGU graduates as goal-oriented and independent workers. 

A vital part of WGU’s model is its student mentors, who serve as the main liaison between the university and students. They serve as advisors to help students achieve their long-term goals in the most effective way possible.

Shannon DeBruhl is a program mentor in the Leavitt School of Health at WGU. As a registered nurse, she helps students through the curriculum in whatever way they need, whether it be emotional support or scheduling. 

DeBruhl said that most of her students are actively working in healthcare. For many nurses, higher degrees are not accessible because of the time their jobs require.

“I even have travel nurses, so they are only somewhere for six to eight weeks in the hospital. Can you imagine them trying to attend a local university?,” DeBruhl said. “Online is the only option for a large percentage of my students.”

Overall, the structure of WGU lends itself to people who may not typically go through higher education: first-generation students, workers, adults, veterans and active duty military. 

“We see a lot of students who may not have considered college an option,” Coulter said. “But all of a sudden, because it’s lower cost, it’s fully accredited or it’s more available, [they] can do it while working. Those are enablers that bring in the populations that may have been disenfranchised or weren’t considering college as an option.”

WGU is a nonprofit institution, similar to most public universities, including NC State. After university employees are paid, Coulter said all their revenue goes right back to students. In North Carolina alone, they’ve awarded $8 million in scholarships.

Coulter said their array of scholarships makes a huge difference for students from low-income backgrounds. With a flat tuition rate and rapid pace, WGU’s average annual bachelor’s tuition rates are 53% lower than the national average. 

Coulter said it is a great privilege to be able to serve populations that are unrepresented in higher education. He said that their work can uplift individuals and their families by providing a generational model for success to those who might not have had one otherwise.

“It’s a unique mission that we have, and it’s one that gets me up early every day, and I’m ready to go in the spirit of collaboration and in the spirit of uplifting others,” Coulter said.