<p>I know a worst college websites thread was made a while ago, but it mainly focused on poor layout and design. I've noticed that it seems like some colleges really want to hide their info on their websites. One college that does this is Carnegie Mellon. I feel like I have to navigate though many sub-menus to find what I want. Who else has noticed this on other websites.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of colleges seem to try very hard to hide the cost of attendance on their sites.</p>
<p>It’s hard to tell; there are a lot of schools that have incredibly crappy (I’m talking two notches above some 14-year old girl’s Angelfire site) webpages, and it can be impossible to even figure out what the various links on the front page are supposed to mean. The cost of attendance is buried in a random About Us page or on a separate Bursar’s site or hidden behind the Lake of Fire in the deepest pit of Tartarus. It’s almost impossible to tell if they’re being deceptive or incompetent though. The clumsy design could be a self-conscious attempt to suggest that they care more about education than about technological fripperies. Or they don’t want to spend the money on quality web design. Either one is equally obnoxious.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065391795-post6.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065391795-post6.html</a></p>
<p>That’s all. :)</p>
<p>UIUC–when DD was accepted, we had a heck of a time activating her account so we could either accept or reject the school, let alone sign up for an orientation session. For a school so well-regarded for all things computers…wow! Not at all logical, findable or clear–you need to find pages that aren’t linked together! This one really frustrated me!</p>
<p>Several universities seem to be rolling out updated web sites, for which their definition of “new and improved” seems to be “provide less information.”</p>
<p>I haven’t usually had trouble finding estimated cost of attendance. It’s usually on a link from the financial aid web page. Of course, on a couple of sites I’ve had trouble finding the financial aid pages. For some reason, they don’t seem to think that prospective students/parents are interested in silly things like finances.</p>
<p>One thing that I usually struggle to find are detailed admission requirements. Little things like what kind of credit they give for AP classes, etc. It’s usually there, but I often end up downloading the college catalog to find it.</p>
<p>Another recent “advance” on a few sites I’ve examined is making it a hair-pulling experience to find direct links to departmental web pages. I don’t know how many times I’ve found myself trapped in an infinite loop, ending up back on some generic major description page, and apparently unable to find a page where I can get detailed information about the faculty, facilities, research, or degree requirements.</p>
<p>I’m finding that a Google search of a university site is often a faster way to get information than trying to navigate through their web pages. You just have to hope that the search doesn’t land you on an outdated page.</p>
<p>I’ll cope with a lot, but I don’t think that it is too much to ask colleges to have a clear, one page list of due dates, addresses, and phone numbers that can be printed for admissions and financial aid. I was amazed at how many schools had this information spread out over five plus screens, or had pop-ups that were not easy to print.</p>
<p>I used Petersons website a lot. That way the format/categorization was always the same. (It can be a bit downlevel on cost information.) </p>
<p>I particularily liked the stat on % living on campus since that is usually not obvious forom the school site.</p>
<p>I couldn’t find out what the 2010-2011 tuition and fees were for one school my D was accepted to and this was well after April 1st! It wasn’t anywhere on their web site (they had the old info) and they had never sent it to me - not even with her awards package. How do they think we will be able to make decisions?</p>
<p>A lot of them don’t like to set (or, I guess, reveal) their tuition and fees until late August for some reason. I’ve seen colleges who had old information from three and a half years ago on when you go to Google but nothing for the current year. These are often the same colleges that take their sweet time posting their final financial aid information too.</p>
<p>It’s funny too, when you run into cheerful terms that disguise ugly truths. When a college tells you to go to its fin aid page and that page says “We hold that college is a tremendous opportunity and is well worth a life long investment” then you can kiss meaningful grant money good bye. A school in that situation is surely going to bury its “typical graduate indebtness” number as deep as possible.</p>
<p>Along with that, any iteration of, “We work hard to try to meet the need of our students” is a concession that they cannot meet their students’ need.</p>
<p>Several schools that i researched recently have web sites that seem to be hiding their CURRENT tuition.</p>
<p>The only college websites that I have ever seen that had obvious clear links to the tuition and financial aid information right on the first page, are community colleges.</p>
<p>if you’re wringing your hands over the cost of college, maybe you should try a trade school and leave the university education to people who actually in it to improve their minds instead of just grubbing for pennies. Just my 2 cents… :D</p>
<p>
The desire to improve one’s mind never put a single penny in anybody’s pocket.</p>
<p>…Meanwhile, back on topic, as someone who has been involved in university web development/redesign processes, I can pretty much guarantee you that if you can’t easily find the tuition and fees, that is incompetence (or just inertia), not deceptiveness. Not everybody who works in university administration is the sharpest tool in the shed, but most of us are smart enough to realize that absolutely nobody is going to look seriously at a school, let alone apply, without first finding out how much it costs–so any effort to hide the tuition information would be pointless and even counterproductive.</p>
<p>The main enemy of good information architecture in college websites is simple, and well captured in the xkcd cartoon: the development process too often caters to administrators’ perceptions of what’s important rather than staying focused on user needs.</p>
<p>^ What nightchef said, in spades.</p>