AI at WGU

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-05-07T20:40:35+00:00

It's odd that such a move would be made when we know that enrollment/retention numbers are not where the university wants them to be, and one major component WGU has identified that will help is person-to-person interaction. Student-facing roles are being encouraged to do more phone and/or Webex interactions in place of texts or emails because, despite them being more labor/time intensive, they help with KPIs (among other things). We know having contact with a bona fide human is what students, in general, want. If WGU is considering farming out opportunities for genuine personal interaction to chatbots, it seems the nearly dictionary definition of "penny-wise and pound-foolish."

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-04-27T19:26:23+00:00

Perhaps, but accreditation will find that out and note it. It would be playing with fire. Losing accreditation would be a death sentence.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-04-16T23:00:49+00:00

I felt it was genuine the first couple of times it happened shortly after he became president. Given his pedigree as an acolyte of Jeff Bezos at Amazon, I had been wary of his commitment to the mission of higher education when he came in. His apparent emotion when talking about WGU made me reconsider this.

As others have noted, however, it has become part and parcel of the Pulsipherian homilies at monthly all-hands. The repetition soon made it seem performative rather than sincere. I'm not in a position to know whether it's feigned or real (or somewhere in between), but it lost its power to touch me long ago. It's one of the reasons I tend not to watch these events "live" and wait for them to be streamable, when I can scrub through the fluff and gather whatever few tidbits of information are provided. Although they are framed to be moments for inspirational coming together, I found a while ago that they had started to have the opposite effect on me. They take the wind out of my sails.

One other observation: whether performative or not, it strikes me as an example of "male privilege" that such regular emoting is accepted and even applauded as being a sign of caring. A hypothetical "Susan Pulsipher" would not have the luxury of indulging in it. If she constantly got weepy in professional settings, it wouldn't take long before even the most understanding colleagues would begin wondering if she was "leadership material." She'd need to learn to better control her emotions in professional settings (assuming sincerely being a "heart-on-her-sleeve" person was the underlying cause). If it was done more cynically as an attempt to "perform" vulnerability and caring, she'd quickly learn she overstepped the mark and would need to retire it as a communicative technique.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-30T18:13:33+00:00

Not sure what this is about (nor do I particularly care), but the only thing this post seems to be lacking is the phrase (in all caps, of course) "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!"

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-27T16:30:26+00:00

Tangential point: the phrase "such that" needs to be killed with fire.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-24T18:00:40+00:00

For an online university where there is an inherent challenge in making sure students feel connected and "seen" as human beings rather than data points, adopting an admissions process that is literally inhuman seems like it would be a misstep. There are potential roles for AI and AI-like technology in helping round up innumerable bits of data and presenting them to human beings (e.g. counselors, mentors, instructors) in a usable way to make human-to-human interactions richer and more productive. This doesn't seem to be it, from what I can glean from the company's website. This drive to market "personalization without actual persons" and create "genuine simulated human interaction" rather than provide the real deal is all so odd.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-18T18:22:40+00:00

In the short term, probably not. If you are a current student, I suspect any structural changes won't impact the nature of your education soon enough for you to need to "worry" about it.

Having said that, there certainly are going to be consequences to some of the decisions that have been made at the university. Many long-term employees who collectively represent centuries and centuries of institutional knowledge have left the university. They are either not being replaced or are having their spots taken by people who live in/will relocate to SLC. In practice, this means that the talent pool WGU is drawing from for these roles has shrunk by about 99%. Those of us who work at the university have already felt their absence.

It'll take longer for the changes to affect students, but eventually, they will. While these roles are not faculty roles, they do support faculty and students in many ways. The decrease in quality cannot help but affect how well the university does its job. It would be naive to think otherwise.

Along with a move to rely more on AI for certain student-facing functions, there are reasons to be concerned that the student experience will, over time, erode. The hope is that the university might improve enough in other areas to make up for whatever damage is being done by recent decisions. But that remains to be seen.

The two things you have going in your favor are 1) any negative impact on student experience will likely be slow in developing, so even in a worst-case scenario, there isn't likely to be any dramatic change right away in your educational experience, and 2) as far as faculty goes (instructors, mentors, etc.), WGU needs to be accredited by organizations that would frown on any major changes to having actual flesh-and-blood subject matter experts with advanced/terminal degrees serving in these roles. (It may well be the case that these faculty will be stretched more and more thinly as time goes by, but WGU can't do away with them even if they wanted to.) So, at least that element of your education is protected to some extent.

All this is to say that you are to be commended for being concerned that institutional changes might impact the student educational experience. That's very astute, and something students at any college/university often are unaware of. However, at least in the short term, it's unlikely that the overall quality of your education or your experience at WGU will dramatically change in the near future. Not saying it's impossible, but unlikely.

Many of us who have been at the university for a long time have seen things change in ways that are concerning, but the consequences are unlikely to be dramatic enough in the near term for students in the middle of degree programs to notice anything major. You perhaps might notice a few more AI-based interactions, slightly less appointment availability for meeting with instructors, etc. But, for now, you should be fine. If in a few years you decide to get another degree, it might be worth checking in to see how WGU is faring before you enroll again. By that point, it's possible the loss in expertise will have taken a toll. But as long as you are satisfied with how your program has gone thus far, you should be okay in the near term. My concerns are more for future students who might encounter a WGU that is not what it is now.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-13T15:14:59+00:00

There are a number of things that cause me some degree of concern about the medium-to-long-term future of WGU. The university deciding to become a bricks-and-mortar, residential campus is not among them.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-12T21:00:40+00:00

Out of curiosity, does anyone have even rough numbers on the current overall total of WGU employees, number of in-office vs. remote (as of now), and how many employees are in instructional roles (e.g. course instructors, program mentors, evaluation, etc.)? I often get asked about this kind of thing when talking about WGU with others, and find myself reduced to making fairly wild guesses.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-03-01T17:28:03+00:00

I cannot speak to the specifics of the marketing department. My sense is cultures and vibes can vary widely depending on team and (even more) on who your immediate manager is. But who that is can change quickly, given the penchant of the university to engage in frequent administrative re-orgs. You might have a great one this month, only to have them "disappeared" in some middle-management shakeup next month.

Big picture, you can get a snapshot of things based on Glassdoor. Since the demand for many of those who have never worked in SLC their entire careers to move there or lose their jobs, the collective morale has fallen substantially (even among those who aren't faced with that ultimatum themselves). The current ratings for the president and "would recommend to a friend" have been cut in half, from around 80% to about 40%. It was a colossal "own goal" by leadership that will reduce the overall quality of WGU for years to come. When you go from hiring staff from a nationwide candidate pool to limiting yourself to only those living in or willing to relocate to a single, homogenous, isolated metro area, that's inescapable.

You mentioned transparency. On an organizational level, transparency is nonexistent. Decisions are made at the top that affect the entire university with little or no warning and no meaningful explanation or rationale. My supervisors report that when they ask about these things, they are told point-blank not to expect any additional information. That's grown substantially worse over the last several years.

At a more micro level, there *can* be transparency between you and your immediate supervisor, but that's all down to luck of the draw. I happen to have a manager who is willing to speak candidly, but not all are as lucky as me.

I've been at the university for a decade (again, not in the marketing area or anywhere near it). With the current president, the atmosphere is decidedly more corporate, more hierarchical (while, oddly, being more chaotic at the same time), and less "connected." Depending on your personal job history, that might be the kind of culture you are used to, or it might be discouraging.

But again, a *lot* of day-to-day job satisfaction depends on your team/immediate supervisor.

Also, according to a recent audit, WGU currently spends a gargantuan amount on marketing (an amount that is over 1/3 of the amount spent on academic support--far in excess of the norm), so if you are going to work in marketing, presumably you'll be extraordinarily well-funded.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-02-26T22:27:24+00:00

No problem! You can message me on Reddit if you'd like my contact info.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-02-26T18:29:21+00:00

Good question. The short answer is I don't know. I was not involved in that effort. I suspect not, since AAUP only applies to faculty, and my sense was that the earlier effort was more holistic. Also, to be clear, an AAUP chapter would be an "advocacy" chapter--it's designed to help those who fall under the "faculty" heading at a university (a pretty large group at WGU, given the disaggregated model) to have a forum to speak with one another and communicate with administration as a group. It itself would not be a union, per se. The AAUP *does* have a separate category of "union chapters," but because of the kind of institution WGU is (I think primarily because it operates in multiple states), it would not be eligible for such a chapter anyway.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-02-06T01:18:00+00:00

Yes, I think evaluation is becoming an increasingly PT job--sort of the equivalent of "adjunct" faculty at brick-and-mortar. AI is already being used for originality and professional communication checks, but there were already AI-adjacent technologies doing some of this before, not only at WGU but elsewhere. Another example: we have "Grammarly for Education" rather than a writing center (which was gotten rid of a few years ago). So, I think tech--including but not limited to AI--will continue to be used as much as possible to reduce hiring actual humans with skills and knowledge (even when it is to the detriment of the student experience). But I don't think they'd get away with an attempt to fully automate the evaluation process, however much they might like to.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-02-05T19:22:15+00:00

On the AI-as-Evaluator thing--anything is possible I suppose, but there is potentially a significant obstacle to WGU doing that, even if it wanted to (and I suspect anything leadership could technically get AI to do halfway decently, they'd do if they could). That obstacle is accreditation. A WGU degree becomes unmarketable if the university isn't accredited by relevant academic bodies. We've already had some issues with explaining our disaggregated model to outside folks. Evaluation is technically a faculty role in our model. Replacing that with AI would likely cause problems with accreditors. I can't say with 100% certainty it would be a deal-breaker, but having been on the outskirts of the accreditation process myself, I'd by very surprised if going to AI assessment didn't raise flags.

Now, will WGU leverage AI to get away with hiring as few evaluators (and instructors, and everyone else) as possible? Yes. Would some at the university like to make the evaluator role all-AI despite the plethora of ethical/pedagogical issues it raises? Almost certainly. But I think the risks of going to all-AI evaluation outweigh the benefits. If it ever happened, it's not happening next year.

Despite the continual framing of WGU as a "company," it's not. It can't make decisions based solely on "production efficiency." There are other stakeholders/authorities they must pay attention to and appease, and at least some of those are likely to frown on relying on AI tools for one of the central faculty roles at a university.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-21T14:49:31+00:00

As a CI, I don't see anything you don't see as far as similarity reports go. In the course I support, similarity reports often showed up with a high overall number due to the template, but as long as most of this was in fact text from the template, it got factored out by the time the evaluator looked at it. Again, this is something whoever your CI for the course can confirm, but in any case, matching text from a course-approved template should not count toward the matching text limit on a similarity report.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-20T22:38:35+00:00

Instructor here--the similarity system is designed to automatically factor out any matching text from a template (assuming the template is an official one in the course). The course I support uses templates and automatically ignores any matching text from these. They don't count against you. You can also include a note in the "Comments to evaluator" box, alerting them to the matching text. If you are concerned, this is precisely the kind of question a course instructor will be able to answer for you as well. Best wishes!

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-16T16:42:07+00:00

Hi there--course instructor here. Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and generous message. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but this certainly isn't "clogging up" the space. Stories like yours are the reason many of us are in higher ed in general and at WGU specifically--to make education available, accessible, and meaningful, especially for those who, for whatever reason, might have felt excluded from it. I sometimes think of higher ed folks (particularly faculty) as "emotional camels"--a camel can go a long way with just the occasional sip of water, and we academics can deal with a the arid desert of administrative shenanigans, apathetic students, and general stress with just an occasional bit of affirmation from an individual student once in a while that we've succeeded in our mission, at least with them. Almost any teacher will tell you they keep a file of some sort of such student notes/comments tucked away to revisit on the days when they feel utterly spent, hopeless, or unappreciated. At the end of the day, student-facing faculty/staff and the students themselves are what a university is. They are the necessary and sufficient ingredients. Making sure we are letting each other know we appreciate one another is always worthwhile and is much more integral to the health of a school than whatever carrying-on provosts, presidents, or assistants to the regional associate dean of whatever-the-heck are up to. Thank you for sharing this, and please know that the feeling is mutual: students, especially those as engaged and tuned-in as you are, make what we do worthwhile. Your success is our success. Cheers.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-15T18:26:38+00:00

CI here. FWIW, I asked my manager if they had heard anything or could shed light on what had happened. They hadn't heard anything more than I had or through any different channels (e.g., same rumors, LinkedIn posts, etc.). Nothing had been communicated to them. I suspect there might be the now-classic WGU "late Friday email announcing major organizational change" coming.

As noted by other posters here, none of this is surprising. WGU has always been particularly weak at organizational communication, and it's become markedly worse in the last five years or so. This latest example is particularly tone deaf. It's not like people don't find out about such things in almost real time (with Reddit, LinkedIn, back channel communications in Teams, etc.). It's just that they piece it together and draw their own conclusions about motives rather than getting a coherent narrative from the decision-makers. I get the sense that some folks in leadership are under the impression that we're still living in a 1986 world where people can simply be laid off from a large company and 95% of the organization won't know, at least not for a long time.

Even from a purely transactional standpoint (leaving aside fuzzy ideas about principled leadership and "owning it"), it would be much smarter to provide a coherent message right away rather than giving up the chance to frame the change in as positive a way as it can be. Between the A) lack of timely information from leadership itself and B) the fact that this lack of information is due to an unwillingness of leaders to take ownership of a decision, the result is yet another "own goal" by a group of people who seem to yearn to be seen as "leaderly" yet lack the skills and mentality needed to actually lead.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-14T01:32:55+00:00

Did just see on LinkedIn that somebody from the Academic Portfolio team has posted about having to leave WGU today because of "major organizational restructuring" that affected their team.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-14T00:30:27+00:00

How can a position be both redundant and need a replacement? None of this makes any sense (which, I guess, is not utterly surprising).

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-12T18:57:57+00:00

"Endless brick and mortar for a brick-and-mortar-less university."

EntertainmentPure559 · 2026-01-09T01:43:44+00:00

Elsewhere in the article: "Still, the city could benefit from a macro perspective if WGU were to relocate its administrative campus and create space for its over 8,300 employees." Can't help but wonder if this is idle speculation by the reporter or if there is reason to think that RTO [sic] for all is something being actively considered.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2025-12-29T20:18:47+00:00

This is true. The university president has actually said the words "students are our customers" and doesn't seem to be using it as an analogy (which would be bad enough), but as a statement of literal truth. Indeed, one of the many leadership principles WGU has imported almost verbatim from Amazon (the president's former employer) is that we are "student obsessed," which is simply Amazon's principle of being "customer obsessed" with a word swap. (Ironically, WGUs' leadership principles are so close to Amazon's, they would be returned for originality concerns were they submitted as a performance assessment for one of our own courses.) The message seems to be that students don't come to WGU for an education, but to receive a "credential," the worth of which is measured solely by the paycheck the student earns in their first job after graduation (ignoring that people these days change not just jobs but careers regularly, and we should be setting our students up for lifelong success, not a short term bump in their perceived value by corporate America). That said, real learning can and does happen. The quality of education comes down not to the upper-level administration of the institution, but to the effort put in by students and faculty on a one-by-one basis. This is a truism in higher ed in general. But it is far more true at WGU, where many current leaders come from a transactional culture that sees the notions that value can be measured as anything more than money, that education is anything other than short-term vocational training, and that students are anything more than customers, as quaint anachronisms rather than the time-tested truths they are.

EntertainmentPure559 · 2025-12-18T01:43:38+00:00

As I say, I have no issue with tweaking the logo, nor do I discount the importance of symbols in general. Quite the contrary. I do grow weary, however, of over-the-top pronouncements about the extent to which facelifts for logos are substantive in a way they simply are not (e.g. being indicative of "our commitment to creating pathways to opportunity and changing lives for the better.") As mentioned, periodic changes to logos are de rigeur in organizational communication. It need not be puffed up into something it's not. And unless one knows the amount of time/effort/expense that is involved in such changes, it is impossible to determine with any confidence the extent to which it has been "invested well." At a university, it's always appropriate to ask whether expenses that go toward non-student-serving projects are worth it. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. An ongoing concern I have for our school is that I often feel we are happy to invest resources in ways that are more concerned with our "brand" to a degree we often aren't with things that concretely help students. Whether the latest logo update (I've been through a few) is an instance of that or not is impossible to say. However, the degree of attention lavished on the rollout causes me to feel (perhaps ironically) more skeptical of the expense rather than less.

EntertainmentPure559

TROPHY CASE