Finance Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 953 finance schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 820 finance 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 60.8% of the 953 finance schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 18.5% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.2%), yellow (4.8%) and black (4.8%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on finance school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest finance 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. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 45.8%, of finance school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on finance school websites include Verdana (21.5%) and Helvetica (6.7%).

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

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. Miami Dade College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 621 finance schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 256 YouTube channel subscribers. The finance schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers

Exactly 697 finance schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,144 Twitter account followers. The finance schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all finance schools have websites, only about 18% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 82.8% of finance school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The finance 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 finance school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The finance 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. University of Connecticut: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Housatonic Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The finance school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
2. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors
3. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors