OEDb (Online Education Database), a database for accredited online education programs, recently announced the 2009 ranking of the top Online Colleges for undergraduate programs. The ranking was first done in 2007. This year’s ranking is “meant to serve as an update” to the first.
The colleges were evaluated among 7 criteria; acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, peer Web citations, retention rate, scholarly citations, student-faculty ratio, and years accredited. The overall ranking measures each college by its average metrics among each of the categories.
The college receiving the highest rank is Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fl. Regent University, Champlain College, Upper Iowa University and LeTourneau University round out the top 5. Some of the more well known brands within online colleges and their ranking are:
· ITT Technical institute (17)
· Kaplan University (22)
· Capella University (23)
· Devry University (25)
· Berkeley College (26)
· University of Phoenix (27)
· Bellevue University (41)
OEDb’s statement about the ranking was, “Online higher education is growing, but a lack of transparency is preventing it from reaching its full potential. Even though online colleges are now receiving increased respect from top employers, diploma mills and the like limit the prestige of a legitimate online degree. We think more transparency is a good thing; a set of objective, quantitative rankings — however imperfect — should help shed some light on the relative attractiveness of the most popular accredited online colleges.”
To view the full rankings, go to http://oedb.org/rankings
