Education Revolution: Dr Courtney Hills McBeth Of Western Governors University (WGU) On Innovative Approaches That Are Transforming Education
An interview with Eden Gold
Say yes to every task and assignment and do it well.
Be constantly curious, keeping learning.
Find a mentor early.
Shine a spotlight on your coworkers and create the culture you want in your workplace.
The landscape of education is undergoing a profound transformation, propelled by technological advancements, pedagogical innovations, and a deepened understanding of learning diversities. Traditional classrooms are evolving, and new modes of teaching and learning are emerging to better prepare students for the complexities of the modern world. This series will take a look at the groundbreaking work being done across the globe to redefine education. As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure to interview Dr. Courtney Hills McBeth.
Dr. Courtney Hills McBeth is the Chief Academic Officer and Provost at Western Governors University (WGU), and leads WGU’s Schools of Health, Education, Technology, and Business, and more than 80 programs and a student body of over 190,000. In this role, she is responsible for academic affairs, including academic program offerings, faculty mentors, credential integrity, accreditation and compliance, program development, curriculum and instructional design, and assessments. Before joining WGU in 2024, she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer at Strada Education Foundation, advancing initiatives to strengthen connections between education and work. With nearly three decades in higher education, Dr. Hills McBeth previously held leadership roles at the University of Utah and earned her doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
The women in my family impressed on me the importance of getting an education.
Neither of my grandmothers graduated from high school. My Grandma Fern, who had to leave school after eighth grade, always encouraged me to get as much education as possible because, she said, it was the best pathway to opportunity.
My mother overcame many challenges in her life to become a scientist, with a successful career in microbiology — which was an uncommon profession for women in her era. My dad was a firefighter. They both talked about education being the way ensure a life where you weren’t stressed about money or having to live paycheck to paycheck.
I learned early on that education is the mechanism to a better life, to economic stability and to personal fulfillment and I decided that working in higher education, with its mission of making that possible for anyone despite their circumstances, was what I wanted to do with my life.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I am currently experiencing a full-circle moment in my career. One of my early jobs in higher ed was at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, building a scaled and diversified internship program for students. I loved working with thousands of students and helping them have these experiences, which often shaped their careers. Now, years later at Western Governors University, we are launching embedded internships and experiential learning in our degree programs and developing new apprenticeship programs that push the edges of innovation at scale. Today, it’s amazing to see many higher education institutions focused on work-based and experiential learning as ways to deliver more value and positive outcomes for students and employers.
Can you briefly share with our readers why you are an authority in the education field?
My journey in higher education began as a student athlete. I also served as an intern in the President’s office while earning my undergraduate degree. In both cases, I had the opportunity to learn about higher ed operations up close and at a young age. It was an influential time for deciding my career path. I spent the following 20+ years working in different roles, sectors, and contexts — including as a program director, clinical professor, and assistant to a university president at a large public institution, as a philanthropic investor at a national foundation, and now as chief academic officer at the nation’s leading nonprofit, online university. Through these experiences I’ve gained a robust and varied perspective of higher education, from what works and what doesn’t to how to build programs at scale, and the power of leading-edge innovation. Throughout my career, I’ve held tight to what is at the core of higher education: students and putting them at the center as we create pathways to opportunity.
Can you identify some areas of the U.S. education system that are going really great?
There is a lot of innovation happening right now in higher ed focused on how to improve value and positive outcomes for students once they’ve earned a degree. I think the new Opportunity Colleges and Universities classification adopted by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education is one thing that is going to change higher ed at a systems level. The new classification evaluates access and earnings outcomes institutions provide students and that is going to require college and universities to show they are delivering value throughout the student journey, from start to finish.
Can you identify the key areas of the U.S. education system that should be prioritized for improvement? Can you explain why those are so critical?
Affordability is a critical issue in higher education. All universities and colleges need to better understand the true cost of delivering an academic program or degree and seek to drive down costs. Second, we need more and better clarity around our public investments in research and development, and the critical role Research 1 institutions play versus other teaching and open access institutions. And we need to continue to focus on completion, so that every student finishes the degree they came for.
Please tell us all about the innovative educational approaches that you are using. What is the specific problem that you aim to solve, and how have you addressed it?
Western Governors University was founded nearly 30 years ago to solve the problems faced by working adult learners without easy access to college and whose lives didn’t align with the traditional, on-campus experience. Our programs are online, asynchronous — students can do course work when it fits their schedule — personalized and competency-based, meaning we require students to prove mastery of subject matter. WGU provides accessible, flexible, and high value/low-cost pathways to a higher education in business, education, health sciences, and technology. Our degrees are intensely workforce-aligned, focused on areas where there are shortages and a high demand for employees — such as nursing, teaching, and cybersecurity — with a strong economic return for our graduates.
Today, we are still serving students who are working and who are seeking credentials and degrees that allow them to advance in their jobs or to change careers entirely. But a growing number of our students, now about one-third of WGU’s student population, have little to no work or college experience. We are continuing to evolve our model to intentionally and strategically serve more student segments.
In what ways do you think your approach might shape the future of education? What evidence supports this?
WGU has developed a high value, low-cost model with flexible scheduling, personalized student experiences, and outcomes that provide real economic returns for graduates. We have invested in technology, data, and business practices and processes that help us understand where we are succeeding and where there are friction points. We’ve driven scale and efficiency with the most student centered, tech-enabled model in higher education. And we think our results provide a model for other institutions.
How do you measure the impact of your innovative educational practices on students’ learning and well-being?
We track three key results: completion, return, and equity. We track student progress weekly, monthly, and quarterly across metrics that include access, pace and progress, persistence, and completion for every student segment. The singular focus and goal is completion.
We assess return for our students using a factored graduate return metric, which measures how many times a WGU degree “pays for itself” over a career. We do this by comparing a graduate’s projected lifetime income increase to the total cost of their degree. This nuanced approach to measuring return on investment ensures we deliver high value at low cost to our students.
For WGU, equity is summed up in our belief in the inherent worth of every individual and their ability to learn, and our commitment to providing a personalized education. We seek to ensure that every student, no matter their starting point, has an equal probability of success at WGU.
What challenges have you faced in implementing your educational innovations, and how have you overcome them?
WGU operates in all 50 states, so we have a unique challenge in meeting the programmatic standards and requirements that can vary greatly from state-to-state and across disciplines. We work closely with our accreditation and state partners, sometimes pushing the boundaries in a way that puts students at the center and us at the forefront of education. We invest heavily in our technology infrastructure to ensure a stable, reliable, and secure learning platform, so vital given we are currently serving more than 193,000 full-time students. We also are investing heavily in AI-enabled solutions to better serve our students.
Can you see any potential drawbacks of this innovation that people should think more deeply about?
All institutions need to be intentional in the use to AI. Our approach to AI is to enable personalization and automation where appropriate so we increase the ability of our faculty and staff to engage in uniquely human interventions that drive student success.
What are “4 pieces of advice” you have for early career individuals?
- Say yes to every task and assignment and do it well.
- Be constantly curious, keeping learning.
- Find a mentor early.
- Shine a spotlight on your coworkers and create the culture you want in your workplace.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This quote from Theodore Roosevelt, which he made during a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910, is one of my favorites because it speaks to the need to devote yourself to a worthy cause and to persist even when you experience setbacks and failures.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
I would love to have lunch with U2’s Bono because he makes amazing music, and he’s lived a lifetime of advocacy for peace and human rights.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I am on LinkedIn and you can also learn more about WGU at wgu.edu.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Education Revolution: Dr Courtney Hills McBeth Of Western Governors University (WGU) On Innovative… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.