Meet Bob Roark: Bob earned both a bachelor’s degree in information technology and an MBA from WGU over the course of two years while he was in his late 30s. Bob is married with two daughters. He had an associate’s degree when he enrolled at WGU. “I had been going to school my entire life,” he says. “I would enroll and make it through a semester and then take six to eight months off. It was really difficult. There was a point when I thought I would never finish.”

Enter WGU. Bob was working as a technical solutions manager for Jefferson County in Colorado. “My position required a bachelor’s degree, and they hired me because I had the capabilities and experience, but I had to finish my degree. That is what prompted me to find a school.” He says he looked at lots of institutions, both traditional and online, and chose WGU because of its flexibility, convenience, reasonable cost and the fact that it was regionally accredited. His employer approved a tuition reimbursement schedule, and he was off and running.

Eventually Bob left his job at the county for a program manager job with a consulting company that was doing work for the United States Geological Survey in Denver. “The bachelor’s degree got me in the door,” he says. “At that point I was thinking about going for a masters.” He explains that completing the course work for his bachelor’s gave him the confidence to continue his education to the next level.

While studying for his masters, Bob interviewed for a delivery manager position with Stratavia (now Dataveil Corporation), a managed service provider (MSP) based in Denver. “One of the things we talked about during the interview was WGU,” Bob says. “He [the interviewer] told me at that point he would rather hire me as a director, not as a manger. It took him a little while to go back and resell this idea to his bosses [several weeks], and then he offered me a job as the director of service management. A lot of that came from me being in the MBA program.”

Bob adds that the MBA course work has “helped me to understand CEO visionary discussions and articulate many business ideas that I was not able to in the past.” In addition, he received a raise in his new position that increased his salary by 32 percent. “The salary increase I received nearly tripled the initial cost of the WGU tuition. Not only was it a very rewarding experience, I’d say it was an outstanding financial investment.”

Meet Bob’s former boss: Matt Wilkinson, now a vice president for Subex Azure Limited, was Bob’s former boss at Stratavia and the person who interviewed and ultimately hired him. An MBA graduate himself from a traditional bricks and mortar institution, Matt says that through discussions with Bob about WGU, as well as seeing first-hand Bob’s work over time, he learned that “the curriculum between a traditional classroom versus online is much the same, from the focus on leadership to finance and accounting.” He adds that “Bob had a more educated view of business in general than his peers. I saw this based on his education and the case-study focus [of the WGU MBA curriculum]. The online curriculum I think helps to force individuals to become quick studies and to become well read. There are lots of documentation, books, articles and case studies that they have to absorb.”

WGU’s Employer Survey Brings Positive Responses

Many employers would agree with Matt’s general assessment that online higher education graduates are productive employees. At least that was the overriding result of an Employer Perceptions Survey Report published in August 2007 by WGU. The survey was conducted by Lighthouse Research & Development whom interviewed 61 employers of WGU graduates. Some of the results of the survey included:

• 95 percent of employers were satisfied with WGU graduates as employees.

• 90 percent of employers rated the workforce preparation of WGU graduates as good or excellent,
  with 69 percent also rating graduates as excellent employees.

• 88 percent of employers said they would hire more WGU graduates if given the chance.