Case Study: Western Governors University achieves 3x faster insights and improved student retention with Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Western Governors University - Customer Case Study

Western Governors University (WGU) is a not‑for‑profit, online university focused on making higher education accessible and student‑centric. As enrollment surged past 140,000, a legacy data warehouse and siloed systems prevented timely insights into student behavior, retention and outcomes; WGU needed to unify disparate data and simplify infrastructure to scale analytics and support a 10x growth objective.

By adopting the Databricks Lakehouse Platform and Delta Lake, WGU centralized 80+ TB of student data, cut core overnight ETL from 10+ hours to 3–4 hours, and moved several ML models into production to predict dropout risk, retention and course completion with prescriptive intervention paths. The unified environment improved collaboration, shortened time to insights (about 3x faster), and enabled data‑driven curriculum and service changes that boost retention and graduation rates.

Western Governors University

Narendra Pandya

Director of Business Intelligence