Information Technology Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,817 information technology schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,516 information technology 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 66.6% of the 1,817 information technology schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6%), yellow (5.1%) and black (4%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on information technology school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest information technology 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 44.8%, of information technology school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on information technology school websites include Verdana (22.6%) and Helvetica (7%).

The largest information technology 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 1,022 information technology schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 308 YouTube channel subscribers. The information technology 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 1,198 information technology schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,494 Twitter account followers. The information technology 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 information technology schools have websites, only about 22% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 78.1% of information technology school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The information technology 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. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on information technology school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The information technology 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. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Gavilan College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The information technology 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