Education Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 2,018 education schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,822 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 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64% of the 2,018 education schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.5% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.5%), yellow (5.8%) and black (5.3%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on education school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest education 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 41.9%, of education school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on education school websites include Verdana (24.1%) and Helvetica (7.2%).

The largest education 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 1,274 education schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 153 YouTube channel subscribers. The education schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 1,502 education schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,381 Twitter account followers. The education 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 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 77.8% of education school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The education schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Minnesota West Community and Technical College: 26,086 broken links
3. College of Saint Mary: 23,650 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on education school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The 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. Arizona Christian University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The 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. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors