Public Administration Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 581 public administration schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 512 public administration 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 62.1% of the 581 public administration schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 19.6% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (4.6%), yellow (4.6%) and black (3.8%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on public administration school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest public administration 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. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%

Font

The largest number, nearly 47.3%, of public administration school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on public administration school websites include Verdana (21.5%) and Helvetica (7.4%).

The largest public administration school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 408 public administration schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 355 YouTube channel subscribers. The public administration schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 452 public administration schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,853 Twitter account followers. The public administration 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 public administration schools have websites, only about 17% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 83.4% of public administration school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The public administration schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
2. Independence Community College: 6,000 broken links
3. University of Michigan - Dearborn: 5,490 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on public administration school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The public administration 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. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. University of Connecticut: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The public administration 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. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors
3. Trinity College: 89 HTML validation errors; 538 CSS validation errors