Art Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,843 art schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,645 art schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 95% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.8% of the 1,843 art schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.7% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (6.6%), blue (6%) and yellow (5.2%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on art school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest art schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42%, of art school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on art school websites include Verdana (23.4%) and Helvetica (7.6%).

The largest art school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Miami Dade College: Arial
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 1,168 art schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 205 YouTube channel subscribers. The art schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
3. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers

Exactly 1,369 art schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,536 Twitter account followers. The art schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all art schools have websites, only about 22% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 78.8% of art school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The art schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. College of Saint Mary: 23,650 broken links
2. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
3. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on art school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The art school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The art school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors