Computer Science Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 803 computer science schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 739 computer science 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 67.7% of the 803 computer science schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 8.8% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.1%), black (6%) and yellow (5.5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on computer science school websites.

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

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: white 15% and grey 6.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 40.7%, of computer science school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on computer science school websites include Verdana (22.4%) and Helvetica (8.1%).

The largest computer science school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 534 computer science schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 502 YouTube channel subscribers. The computer science 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. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers

Exactly 635 computer science schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,752 Twitter account followers. The computer science schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
3. Yale University: 23,748 followers

Web Metrics

Although all computer science schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.1% of computer science school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The computer science schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
3. Independence Community College: 6,000 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on computer science school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The computer science 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 computer science school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Ridgewater College: 0 HTML validation errors; 846 CSS validation errors
2. Eckerd College: 14 HTML validation errors; 558 CSS validation errors
3. Metropolitan State University: 435 HTML validation errors; 5 CSS validation errors