Communications Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,301 communications schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,211 communications 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 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.4% of the 1,301 communications schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.6% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.1%), black (5.5%) and yellow (5.4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on communications school websites.

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: white 56% and blue 1.1%
3. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42.8%, of communications school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on communications school websites include Verdana (22.4%) and Helvetica (8.1%).

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: Times New Roman
3. Arizona State University: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 893 communications schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 306 YouTube channel subscribers. The communications schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
3. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers

Exactly 1,032 communications schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,703 Twitter account followers. The communications schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers

Web Metrics

Although all communications schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.5% of communications school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The communications schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
3. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links

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

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

The communications 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. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors
3. Irvine Valley College: 0 HTML validation errors; 854 CSS validation errors