|
Financial Aid
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 January 16, 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 | 9,500 |
| 2 | University of Phoenix | 4,180 |
| 3 | Regent University | 3,340 |
| 4 | California University of Pennsylvania | 2,460 |
| 5 | Walden University | 2,160 |
| 6 | Kaplan University | 1,690 |
| 7 | Liberty University | 1,450 |
| 8 | Capella University | 1,420 |
| 9 | Western Governors University | 1,070 |
| 10 | Berkeley College | 927 |
| 11 | Jones International University | 461 |
| 12 | Champlain College | 398 |
| 13 | Franklin University | 358 |
| 14 | Upper Iowa University | 352 |
| 15 | LeTourneau University | 267 |
| 16 | Grand Canyon University | 261 |
| 17 | Dickinson State University | 259 |
| 18 | Fisher College | 236 |
| 19 | Colorado Technical University | 217 |
| 20 | Bellevue University | 201 |
| 21 | American InterContinental University | 191 |
| 22 | ITT Technical Institute | 145 |
| 23 | Tiffin University | 141 |
| 24 | York Technical College | 120 |
| 25 | Western International University | 117 |
| 26 | City University | 109 |
| 27 | Darton College | 98 |
| 28 | Grantham University | 82 |
| 29 | Salem International University | 62 |
| 30 | National American University | 58 |
| 31 | Peirce College Online | 50 |
| 32 | Westwood College | 33 |
| 33 | Post University | 31 |
| 34 | Florida Metropolitan University * | 29 |
| 34 | South University | 29 |
| 36 | Herzing College | 23 |
| 37 | Everglades University | 22 |
| 38 | National University | 18 |
| 39 | Granite State College | 16 |
| 40 | Ellis College | 13 |
| 41 | Florida National College | 5 |
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 Ellis College was "New York Institute of Technology" "Ellis College" 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 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.
* Note: Florida Metropolitan University is now known as Everest University, but for the purposes of collecting data for this metric, we used the name "Florida Metropolitan University".
View other rankings:
« Previous: Ranking by Retention Rate | Overall Rankings | Next: Ranking by Student-Faculty Ratio »
OEDb's Online College Rankings ranks 41 of the nation's top online colleges by eight different metrics. Please read more about this study or about our methodology for additional information.