Salt Lake City-based Western Governors University (WGU) has announced the acquisition of Craft Education Inc. to accelerate of its endeavor to develop, launch and scale work-based learning pathways.
Nashville, Tennessee-based Craft Education is a education technology company focused on apprentice-based programs with a platform for establishing, monitoring, reporting and facilitating on-the-job training aligned with degree programs and work-ready skills.
“With this acquisition, WGU fast-tracks its ability to innovate and scale work-based curriculum and new student experience designs,” the school said in a statement. “The combination accelerates the expansion of apprenticeship and other embedded job programs alongside WGU’s existing degree and certificate offerings across education, health care, technology and business.”
“Combining Craft with WGU represents a step-function advancement in our mission and pace of innovation to improve quality, access, equity and outcomes in education relevant to the world of work,” said Scott Pulsipher, president of the national nonprofit university. “While WGU’s current model serves many, there are so many more who are acquiring knowledge and skill through work. Work-based learning, leveraging our competency-based approach, is the future of pathways to both activate talent from everywhere and meet the strategic workforce needs of the future.”
“We are seeking to build the best work-based learning pathways in the country, modeling for other higher education institutions how to connect learning and work at scale,” said Courtney Hills McBeth, chief academic officer and provost at WGU. “Our investment will turbocharge this initiative and extend our innovative approach to linking students to careers and improving student outcomes, while demonstrating our leadership at the frontier of creating more pathways to opportunity.”
With the acquisition of Craft Education, Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, CEO and founder of Craft, and its employees will join WGU. As part of the acquisition, WGU intends to retain the Craft Education name and will establish a new, nonprofit operating division. Dwinal-Palisch will serve as executive director of this division, leaving her role as chancellor at Reach University. The Craft division will focus on developing the ecosystem platform for enabling work-based pathways across higher education and employer partners, including WGU.
In addition, WGU will establish an academic department inside the university to focus on the design, development and scaling of work-based programs across its schools of education, health, technology and business. This organization will define and provide differentiated and consistent tech-enabled learning, instruction and student-experience models across WGU’s program portfolio and build the presence and partnerships necessary to scale enrollment locally and nationally, the university said.
Earlier this month, WGU announced it had reached a historic milestone by conferring 50,168 degrees, earned by 49,564 students, in academic year 2024. Sixty-seven percent of those graduates were from one or more underserved populations — students of color, first in family to attend college, rural residents or low-income earners.