Fire Science Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 471 fire science schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 419 fire 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 68.6% of the 471 fire science schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 10% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.6%), yellow (4.5%) and black (4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on fire science school websites.

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

1. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: white 56% and blue 1.1%
2. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
3. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%

Font

The largest number, nearly 44.8%, of fire science school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on fire science school websites include Verdana (27%) and Tahoma (4.9%).

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

1. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: Times New Roman
2. Miami Dade College: Arial
3. Houston Community College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 263 fire science schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 59 YouTube channel subscribers. The fire science schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Oklahoma State University - Main Campus: 811 subscribers
2. Johnson County Community College: 734 subscribers
3. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: 710 subscribers

Exactly 319 fire science schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 587 Twitter account followers. The fire science schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. University of Florida: 15,558 followers
2. Oklahoma State University - Main Campus: 6,250 followers
3. University of Akron Main Campus: 5,682 followers

Web Metrics

Although all fire science schools have websites, only about 26% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 74.7% of fire science school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The fire science schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 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 fire science school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The fire science 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. Monterey Peninsula College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Norwalk Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. Lake - Sumter Community College: 62 HTML validation errors; 864 CSS validation errors
2. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors
3. Milwaukee Area Technical College: 519 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors