Software Engineering Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 102 software engineering schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 85 software engineering 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 98% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 59.8% of the 102 software engineering schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 16.7% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (7.8%), green (5.9%) and yellow (2.9%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on software engineering school websites.

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

1. Liberty University: white 12% and red 5.1%
2. Walden University: white 34% and yellow 1.2%
3. University of Maryland - University College: white 14% and blue 3.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 52.9%, of software engineering school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on software engineering school websites include Verdana (19.6%) and Georgia (4.9%).

The largest software engineering school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Liberty University: Georgia
2. Walden University: Georgia
3. University of Maryland - University College: Verdana

Social Presence

Exactly 60 software engineering schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 520 YouTube channel subscribers. The software engineering schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
2. TechSkills - Charlotte: 1,646 subscribers
3. West Virginia University: 1,555 subscribers

Exactly 76 software engineering schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,357 Twitter account followers. The software engineering schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Texas Tech University: 14,268 followers
2. Liberty University: 10,592 followers
3. West Virginia University: 10,568 followers

Web Metrics

Although all software engineering schools have websites, only about 21% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 79.2% of software engineering school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The software engineering schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. University of Michigan - Dearborn: 5,490 broken links
2. Michigan Technological University: 918 broken links
3. University of Wisconsin - La Crosse: 855 broken links

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

1. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Prairie State College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. The University of Texas at Arlington: 1 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. University of Scranton: 0 HTML validation errors; 376 CSS validation errors
2. Community College of Allegheny County: 258 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Robert Morris University: 53 HTML validation errors; 197 CSS validation errors