Physician Assistant Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 139 physician assistant schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 125 physician assistant 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 64.7% of the 139 physician assistant schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 10.1% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (7.2%), yellow (6.5%) and black (5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on physician assistant school websites.

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

1. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
2. University of Florida: white 39% and grey 1.6%
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: white 11% and grey 1.7%

Font

The largest number, nearly 45.3%, of physician assistant school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on physician assistant school websites include Verdana (25.2%) and Helvetica (7.9%).

The largest physician assistant school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. University of Florida: Trebuchet Ms
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 97 physician assistant schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 382 YouTube channel subscribers. The physician assistant schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
2. Emory University: 2,807 subscribers
3. Duke University: 1,394 subscribers

Exactly 108 physician assistant schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,346 Twitter account followers. The physician assistant schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Yale University: 23,748 followers
2. University of Wisconsin - Madison: 16,729 followers
3. University of Florida: 15,558 followers

Web Metrics

Although all physician assistant schools have websites, only about 14% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 86.1% of physician assistant school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The physician assistant schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. The University of Findlay: 1,219 broken links
2. George Washington University: 1,094 broken links
3. Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science: 1,066 broken links

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

1. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Miami Dade College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Wichita State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors
2. Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center - New Orleans: 487 HTML validation errors; 9 CSS validation errors
3. Des Moines University - Osteopathic Medical Center: 0 HTML validation errors; 235 CSS validation errors