WGU charges a flat rate per six-month term, courses unlimited. Effective January 2026, undergraduate business runs $3,830 tuition plus a $200 resource fee, about $4,030 per term; graduate business runs $4,805 plus $200, about $5,005; RN-to-BSN runs $5,325 plus $200; and the MSN FNP track about $6,955 per term. A bachelor's finished in four terms instead of six costs roughly $8,000 less for the identical diploma. Every course you clear early is free; every course that spills past term's end costs a whole new term.
The verified rates
| Program family | Per six-month term (Jan 2026) | Practical read |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduate business | $3,830 + $200 resource fee | About $4,030 buys as many CUs as you can pass in 26 weeks |
| Graduate business (MBA, MS) | $4,805 + $200 | One strong term can hold half an MBA |
| RN to BSN | $5,325 + $200 | Heavy transfer credit makes single-term finishes realistic |
| MSN, FNP track | about $6,955 | The priciest term in the catalog, and the costliest one to waste |
Other programs sit in the same bands; your enrollment counselor quotes the exact figure. Financial aid, employer partnerships, and WGU's own scholarships all apply per term, which quietly means aid also stretches further the faster you move.
The arithmetic nobody runs until term four
Take the undergraduate business figure and divide. A student clearing 30 CUs in a term is paying about $134 per CU. The same student coasting at 12 CUs is paying $336 per CU, two and a half times the rate, for the same material and the same diploma. Now run it forward: the catalog's standard path plans a 120-CU bachelor's across roughly eight terms for a part-time pace, about $32,000, while documented accelerators finish in three or four terms, $12,000 to $16,000. The spread between an average pace and a managed pace is a used car.
The spillover case is worse than the averages suggest. A term that ends with one course unfinished does not cost you one course; it costs a full term's tuition to reopen that course, plus six more months of life logistics. This is why our whole WGU practice is built around the term boundary: the most expensive sentence at this university is "I'll finish it next term."
What actually sets your pace
- Transfer credit before day one: CUs cleared by transcript, Sophia, Study.com, or IT certs are CUs no term has to carry, details in the admissions manual
- Task throughput: performance assessments drafted, submitted, and evaluated without idle weeks, the job of the task service
- OA scheduling off preassessment evidence instead of dread, the job of OA prep
- Two courses in motion at all times, so evaluator queues never stall the term, the term-map discipline
- An early-term sprint: CUs banked in weeks one through eight are insurance against the life events of weeks nine through twenty-six
Cost of support versus cost of pace
Run the comparison honestly, because we do sell the thing. Task support costs money per course; a term costs $4,030 to $6,955 regardless. A client whose support compresses eight planned terms into four has paid for the service many times over out of tuition alone, before counting the year of salary difference a two-years-earlier degree tends to carry. That is the entire business case on one line, and the full program-by-program version lives on the expedite page.
Price your term, not your credits
Send your program and Degree Plan. We return the per-CU math for your current pace and the compressed one.
Sources and verification
Facts on this page come from official and independent sources, and anything that matters is worth checking against the originals:
- www.wgu.edu/about/institutional-catalog.html: WGU's Institutional Catalog, the primary source for assessment, grading, and term policies
- www.wgu.edu/financial-aid-tuition/tuition-business-degrees.html: official per-term tuition published at wgu.edu
- nwccu.org: Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, the institutional accreditor
- www.ccneaccreditation.org: Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the nursing accreditor
- apastyle.apa.org: APA Style, the official style authority behind the formatting rules