Online College Ranking by Scholarly Citations

The amount of citations from other scholars is a widely recognized indicator of the importance of academic work. Mainstream colleges and universities often are judged by the quantity, quality, and importance of the research they put out, and there is no reason that online colleges shouldn't be likewise judged. A college is only as good as its students and faculty. Google Scholar provides a way to search for scholarly literature, which makes it a useful proxy for the amount of citations a particular college receives.

The data in the "Scholarly Citations" column refers to the number of results that Google Scholar returned on December 4, 2008 for the following search query syntax (with the quotation marks): "College Name". For example, for the University of Phoenix, the search query we used was "University of Phoenix".

Rank	College	Scholarly Citations
1	Nova Southeastern University	11,800
2	University of Phoenix	4,840
3	Regent University	4,190
4	Walden University	2,570
5	Liberty University	2,180
6	Capella University	1,730
7	Western Governors University	1,100
8	Berkeley College	1,030
9	Baker College	892
10	Devry University	537
11	Jones International University	494
12	Champlain College	473
13	Upper Iowa University	334
14	Fisher College	321
15	LeTourneau University	318
16	Grand Canyon University	304
17	Dickinson State University	288
18	Colorado Technical University	273
19	Bellevue University	246
20	American InterContinental University	229
21	Northcentral University	155
22	ITT Technical Institute	153
23	Tiffin University	151
24	City University	148
25	Western International University	139
26	Ashford University	134
26	York Technical College	134
28	Darton College	109
29	Kaplan University	89
29	Keiser University	89
31	Salem International University	68
32	National American University	64
33	Peirce College	53
34	Westwood College	49
35	Everest University	40
36	Herzing College	37
37	Rasmussen College	34
38	Post University	32
39	South University	31
40	Everglades University	23
41	National University	22
42	Granite State College	15
43	Florida National College	10
44	Franklin University	4

Note: There were some instances for which this search query had to be adjusted:

The search query used for City University was "City University" "Bellevue, WA" because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for Fisher College was "Fisher College" -"Ohio State" -"John Fisher" because (1) the name of Ohio State University's business school is "Fisher College" and (2) there is a St. John Fisher College for which we did not want to return results.
The search query used for Franklin University was "Franklin University Ohio" -"Benjamin Franklin" -"Rosalind Franklin" because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for Kaplan University was "Kaplan University" -"University of" because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for Keiser University was "Keiser University" Florida OR FL because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for National University was "National University La Jolla, CA" because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for Post University was "Post University" Waterbury because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.
The search query used for South University was "South University Savannah" OR "South University Online" because otherwise it is an ambiguous term.

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Online College Ranking by Scholarly Citations