WGU is accredited, so it's not a scam. You can earn a recognized degree and use it without wondering whether or not it's "real".
Whether or not WGU is a good school is another question. Every University has its issues, and WGU is no exception. I don't have any personal experience with the school, but I can offer a few online education tips:
1) You lose the classroom setting and the space explicitly dedicated to academia. This may not be a particularly big deal at first, but the difficulty of the degree determines how much time you'll spend studying. If all your time spent studying is done next to your kitchen, you will have to fight much harder to win the battle of wills.
2) In my personal experience online classes are much, MUCH easier than their in-person counterparts. Not only is the work load lighter (usually), but the studying required is also significantly lower because the Professor knows you have access to all of the materials in a separate tab. The only exception I have seen is a Physics class, which used the online portion effectively because of the website being very clever about how questions and answers were handled (although you could still Google similar questions). The ease of online courses may or may not be a bad thing. It depends what your Major is going to be and what you want to do. Sociology? Probably not that difficult to begin with, so you're not losing out a bunch by taking classes online. Chemistry? You're fucked. There's too much to see done in person for some degrees (usually the "hard" sciences - Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Biology) to be effectively communicated online. You can pass the class, but if it's a foundation course it will hurt you a lot.
3) The course is only as good as the materials the teacher has uploaded/made available. I had one online course that was drawing entirely from the teacher's book. In a .txt file. That was a fun few months.
4) You don't built the network of classmates that become studying support that you normally would sitting in a physical classroom. Sure, you might see the same names pop up on message boards and in class rosters, but you don't really recognize the person. You can't go study together at a coffee shop while playing off each others' strengths. Again, for "soft" degrees that may not matter so much... but it also robs you of some of the college experience. College is a place to build contacts for the future as much as it is to learn, and the guy sitting next to you in Engl 2015 might become a lawyer while the gal behind you goes on to be the Managing Director at a company. Many of my friends are pre-med (as I am myself), so it builds my repertoire of recommendations for patients who might travel to places where my friends are. I also have one Biologist friend who's planning on becoming a researcher (great person to go hiking with), and a Vet (and I love dogs!).
5) You are the only one responsible for your success or failure. I might actually consider this a plus, but most people don't have the ability. You're at home or at work, you're going through the materials on your own at a pace you're comfortable with, and unless there are technical difficulties or the teacher hates your work you cannot blame anybody if you end up failing except YOU. In a regular university setting you can have a really shit Adviser, you can have a really shit Professor, and you can have a really shit TA that leads you astray. Online it's all on you.
That said, if it's your best option it is your best option. Know what you're getting into as much as you can, and realize there will be plenty of speedbumps along the way. Expect the unexpected, as they say. Choose your courses carefully and budget your time with absolutely no compromise. My mother finished a B.A. in Business Management (or something similar) from the University of Phoenix and she worked her ass off to get it, and it served her well since it allowed her to advance in the company (who helped pay for it).
What I WOULDN'T do is attend an online university for an economically useless Major. That's kind of obvious anyways, but I think it goes doubly so with online universities. A degree simply isn't worth what it was 30 years ago. It doesn't makeup for lack of experience in the field, and might not even be a sign that you can work hard towards a goal with the knowledge of how to go about the task depending on the area of study ("Interracial Studies" comes to mind). All it might show is that you attended class and can write essays. The "academic for academia's sake" type of degrees are great if you already have a steady job, or want to forge ahead with a great research project in the area... but they're not jobs, and online universities aren't that much cheaper (if they are at all) than public universities.
