I was online (as always) and stumbled across an advertisement for an online college. It was not the first time I had seen an advert for an online school and it won’t be the last. I don’t know if its just me, but I have been seeing a lot of “back to school” ads these days. Have you ever been curious as to how many people attend these institutions? Maybe not, but I was, at least on one occasion. So much so, I decided to do a bit of research. I wanted to know how popular these online schools were with jobseekers. So, how do I do that?
The first thing I did was search Google for articles listing for “top online universities and schools” and found a top 10 list of online universities.
Using this list as my basis I realized that I was not considering several others that should be on this list. As a matter of fact, when I searched out these online universities, I noticed several Google Ads from other schools I had never heard of. So, when considering my research, take that into account.
I used Google initially to run my searches, but it kept blocking me so I switched to Yahoo and then back to Google because I’m a glutton for punishment. In my searches, I looked for the term “resume” or “CV” in the title of the document and the name of the school, but not see terms in the title like sample, tips, how and fake. Why? When I ran my searches initially, I would see a lot of resume samples, resume tips, things like that. I also saw results entitled “How to write a resume” as well and… Okay, I think I am seeing your eyes glaze over a bit, so let me share my data. (Click here for a sample of one of my searches.)
- In both Google and Yahoo, University of Phoenix was represented in online resumes the most and by a WIDE margin.
- In both Google and Yahoo, Devry University was in second place when it came to being mentioned on online resumes.
- In both Google and Yahoo, American Intercontinental University (AIU) was in third and Kaplan was fourth.
Does this suggest that the University of Phoenix is the best online university there is? Um… I cannot say. What I can say is that in the sampling of schools I considered, University of Phoenix attendees had the most resumes online. So, there you go.
In case you want to look at more numbers, here is how the stats lined up.
I found on Yahoo:
- 1,910 University of Phoenix resumes
- 531 Devry University resumes
- 495 AIU resumes
- 311 Kaplan resumes
- 169 Liberty University resumes
- 162 South University
- 37 Post University
- 36 Ashford University
- 29 St. Leo university resumes
- 16 Everest University resumes
- 9.940 University of Phoenix resumes
- 2,630 Devry University resumes
- 1,700 AIU resumes
- 1,850 Kaplan resumes
- 605 South University resumes
- 523 Liberty resumes
- 506 Ashford University resumes
- 447 Everest University resumes
- 274 Saint Leo resumes
Hmm… quite a disparity of search results, but I digress. I hope you found this information of interest.
Cheers,
Jim
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This is interesting research. I’ve never considered getting an education from an online college. I do wonder what companies and recruiters think of them though. I’ve always been under the impression that college rankings matter to many recruiters and as such, lower ranked schools like many online schools automatically get pushed to the bottom. I realize that it is an elitist way of thinking, and that growing up in northeast US has likely biased my way of thinking, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on that concern.