Early Childhood Education Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,137 early childhood education schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,018 early childhood education 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 66% of the 1,137 early childhood education schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.2% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (5.7%), yellow (5.5%) and black (4.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on early childhood education school websites.

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
3. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42.6%, of early childhood education school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on early childhood education school websites include Verdana (24.5%) and Helvetica (6.7%).

The largest early childhood education school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. Houston Community College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 700 early childhood education schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 126 YouTube channel subscribers. The early childhood education schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 2,942 subscribers
3. Purdue University - Main Campus: 2,760 subscribers

Exactly 822 early childhood education schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,402 Twitter account followers. The early childhood education schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all early childhood education schools have websites, only about 23% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 77.9% of early childhood education school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The early childhood education schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. College of Saint Mary: 23,650 broken links
3. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on early childhood education school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The early childhood education 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. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 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 early childhood education 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. Chippewa Valley Technical College: 121 HTML validation errors; 942 CSS validation errors
3. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors