Our view: Accolades for West Texas A&M good for entire region

West Texas A&M University has quietly and steadily garnered positive recognition since the fall semester began in late August, and the latest acknowledgement of the school’s ascendancy comes from Texas Online Colleges, which recently ranked WT among the top 10 in Texas.

The online affirmation should come as no surprise. Providing quality remote instruction has long been a priority at WT, where an emphasis in online education can be traced to the launch of WT Online in the late 1990s.

When the ongoing pandemic began to take hold last March, forcing a rapid pivot to remote instruction for educational institutions, WT was well-positioned for such a move. Since its early embrace of online learning, the school has steadily expanded its offerings, tethering together distance learning and affordability and raising the university’s profile along the way to the point where WT no longer simply a regional university.

It is that and much more.

“Rankings like this show how we provide a high-quality, economically feasible education to students all across Texas and, indeed, the world,” WT President Walter Wendler said in a news release from the school. “WT has been a pioneer in online education since 1997, and that long history of service in the online realm pays off for our students, in terms of academic excellence, affordability and flexibility.”

According to Texas Online Colleges, a website focused only on online and hybrid educational opportunities in the state, the rankings are not based simply on academic quality, but also take into account how schools fully serve their online students.

This puts a premium on other metrics such as the number of online programs and the number of students graduated from those programs. Likewise, such recognition is a reflection of the quality of WT’s faculty, staff and students.

West Texas A&M was cited within the rankings for being the sixth most affordable online college in Texas and for being the fifth best value online college in the state. The school’s ranking also includes other important categories such as veteran services, dual-credit opportunities for high school students and the number of online and hybrid undergrad, grad and doctoral degrees offered.

“We know that nearly 70 percent of online students enroll in schools within 45 miles of their homes,” Kelly Waller, an outreach specialist with TexasOnlineCollege.com, said in the school’s news release. “People want local schools they know and trust. People want to know they’re learning what matters where they live. We believe all of this is best achieved by focusing on local options.”

The fall has been replete with recognition for the university. It’s undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program has been named among the best in the country, and its online bachelor of nursing program was recently tabbed among the country’s top 10. WT ranked among the top 10 safest campuses in the country and safest in the state, and the university’s police department was a recognized law enforcement agency for the second time by the state’s Police Chiefs Association Foundation.

Finally, among more than 1,200 online programs surveyed this year by U.S. News & World Report, the school was recognized as tops among Texas schools in a handful of categories, including online bachelor’s program and online MBA programs for veterans.

We congratulate WT on all of these accolades. The recognition is important for the university and meaningful for the entire region.