Civil Engineering Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 403 civil engineering schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 381 civil engineering 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 98% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 66.5% of the 403 civil engineering schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.5%), yellow (5%) and black (4.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on civil engineering school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest civil engineering 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 44.7%, of civil engineering school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on civil engineering school websites include Verdana (21.3%) and Helvetica (7.9%).

The largest civil engineering 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 279 civil engineering schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 765 YouTube channel subscribers. The civil engineering schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 319 civil engineering schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,794 Twitter account followers. The civil engineering schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
2. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: 18,232 followers

Web Metrics

Although all civil engineering schools have websites, only about 17% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 83.4% of civil engineering school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The civil engineering schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links
2. Vincennes University: 3,603 broken links
3. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University: 2,283 broken links

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

1. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. University of Connecticut: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Florida State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. Chippewa Valley Technical College: 121 HTML validation errors; 942 CSS validation errors
2. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors
3. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors