June 1, 2006

By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti

“[We needed to] avoid the stigma of being a diploma mill,” says Dennis Bromley, Director of Business Programs for Western Governors University (WGU). Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, WGU is an institution founded with distance education in mind. WGU’s model, Bromley says, is to “increase access to education to underserved populations.” It serves as a portal to existing programs at a variety of other accredited institutions. But its competency-based approach to degree-granting had to be clearly distinguished from the “credit for life experience” pitch of the diploma mills. They did this with an inventive system of mentoring that “unbundles” instructing, advising and assessing.

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