Engineering Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,039 engineering schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 966 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 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 65.4% of the 1,039 engineering schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.4% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.9%), yellow (5.3%) and black (4.5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on engineering school websites.

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

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 44.9%, of engineering school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on engineering school websites include Verdana (23.5%) and Helvetica (6.2%).

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

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 680 engineering schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 453 YouTube channel subscribers. The engineering 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 796 engineering schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,876 Twitter account followers. The engineering 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 engineering schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.8% of engineering school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The engineering schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Independence Community College: 6,000 broken links
2. University of Michigan - Dearborn: 5,490 broken links
3. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links

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

1. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. California Lutheran University: 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 engineering 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. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors