File:WGU-we are wise.jpg

Western Governor's University

Education without boundaries.™

https://www.wgu.edu/

Four online colleges. 60+ flexible degree programs.

The first university where all bachelor’s and master’s degrees are competency-based, with online courses designed in partnership with leading employers. We’re nonprofit, driven entirely by a mission to serve students—in fact, it’s right there in our name. We’re called Western Governors University because we were created by a group of U.S. governors, an innovative solution to their states’ demand for high-quality, outcomes-oriented higher education.

SJS / GreenPolicy360 siterunner: I was asked by the Governor of New Mexico in 1996 to represent our state in the creation of the "Virtual University". I was responsible for oversight of 'the web' in some 900 schools in the state and accepted with the goal of utilizing the new Internet/World Wide Web to create an online, accredited university. In my travels in 1969/70 I had become impressed by the new UK "Open University" and realized that in the future online networks that provide new media access to the top-level professors and educators could be made available to every student geographically. In the 1990s, as a member of New Mexico's State Board of Education, I could see the future more clearly in my role out in front of educational technology. The idea of bringing 'remote learning/distance learning' to all students in our state and states around the country and world was immensely appealing. My goal also was to make higher education affordable and in New Mexico I worked to propose a full-tuition college scholarship, which was funded with a state lottery scholarship program. The combination of access and funding came to be. Each of the original Virtual University founding states appointed a member to serve on the work group and we set in motion what was formally announced in 1997 -- the new Western Governor's University.

The WGU and NM lottery scholarship are well into their second decade of success now in 2019. Education is the key to opening doors for every student and lifelong learning is an opportunity all of us deserve. It is a torch we are all passing forward, education and what education brings with it.

https://www.wgu.edu/about/our-story.html

(Via Wikipedia)

The Western Governors University is a private, nonprofit, online university based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The university was founded by 19 U.S. governors in 1997 after the idea was formulated at a 1995 meeting of the Western Governors Association.

In January 1997, 13 governors were on hand to sign the articles of incorporation formally beginning the new university.

In 2001, the United States Department of Education awarded $10 million to found the Teachers College, and the first programs were offered in Information Technology.

US Department of Education" ... "the innovative student-first model used by this school and others like it has garnered bipartisan support over the last decade." In January 2019, the U.S. Department of Education's Federal Student Aid (FSA) office issued their final audit determining that WGU was indeed eligible to participate in federal student aid... The news editor for Inside Higher Ed, said the "much anticipated high-stakes audit" had begun more than four years earlier and the findings were "not a surprise to most observers", due to their reliance on a 1992 law that defines aid eligibility for distance education programs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University

(Social Media)

https://twitter.com/wgu

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https://www.wgu.edu/newsroom.html

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In the tradition of the UK's Open University

http://www.open.ac.uk/

SJS / Surrounded by ideas and knowledge, a virtual feast of plenty. A Tip of the GreenPolicy360 hat to the WGU and OU on the 50th anniversary of the Open University / March 2019

Studying at home, instead of in lecture halls...

https://50.open.ac.uk/

https://youtu.be/TrKIImWQejI

https://twitter.com/BBC/status/1106888124796469248

Where you start in life shouldn't limit where you go

We are a movement... we are disruptors, occasional troublemakers, game changers

We are the fuel of imagination

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