Western Governors University, a nonprofit serving nearly 190,000 students, adopted the Open edX platform to support its competency-based education (CBE) model at scale—where student progress is tied to demonstrated mastery rather than seat time or calendar. As the first Mission-Aligned Organization in the Open edX community, WGU took an active role in shaping the platform’s direction, not merely consuming it. The open-source architecture provided the flexibility to build the data infrastructure CBE requires, enabling precise tracking of student progress and targeted intervention. The outcomes are concrete: affordable, accessible education where 57% of undergraduates completed their degrees in 2022–23 without taking a federal student loan.
