{"id":480762,"date":"2026-10-29T22:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T22:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/480762\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T22:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T22:08:10","slug":"western-governors-university-marks-15-years-in-texas-central-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/480762\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Governors University marks 15 years in Texas | Central Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Educators, public officials and graduates from across the state gathered in Austin on Oct. 27 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Western Governors University<\/a> in Texas. The online university offers certificates, bachelor&#8217;s and master&#8217;s degrees that students can complete at their own pace.<\/p>\n<p>About the organization<\/p>\n<p>WGU was founded in 1997 by a bipartisan group of 19 governors in Western states to provide a more affordable and flexible option for higher education. In 2011, then-Gov. Rick Perry signed an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgu.edu\/blog\/wgu-texas-launch1712.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">executive order<\/a> making Texas an official WGU affiliate. <\/p>\n<p>Since 2011, WGU in Texas has reached the following milestones:<\/p>\n<p>38,691 total graduates\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>45,545 degrees earned<\/p>\n<p>24,087 students currently enrolled<\/p>\n<p>Over $34 million in scholarships awarded<\/p>\n<p>More than 87 statewide partnerships\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Of the students currently enrolled, 83% come from one or more underserved populations, 49% are first-generation college students and 23% are low-income. <\/p>\n<p>Quote of note<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was definitely one of those options that was super flexible, so that kind of fit my current schedule, especially since I work full time,&#8221; 2026 WGU graduate Jacob Gomez said. &#8220;It was super convenient for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One more thing<\/p>\n<p>Linda Battles, regional vice president for the South region, spoke about a partnership that WGU recently entered into with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Anthropic<\/a>. Anthropic is the AI company that created Claude, a series of large language models. Battles described AI as &#8220;the great equalizer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My vision of the future with AI, using it responsibly [and ethically], is to see that we have no more first-generation students, that we are able to reach those underserved populations and that we are scaling opportunity but not scaling costs,&#8221; she said.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Educators, public officials and graduates from across the state gathered in Austin on Oct. 27 to celebrate the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,289,162129,162130,27,162127,162128],"class_list":["post-480762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-higher-education","tag-linda-battles","tag-online-university","tag-texas","tag-western-governors-university","tag-wgu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}