Master universities accounted for 32 percent of all sites in the survey. We found both good and poor examples within this group of institutions. According to the Carnegie Foundation's 1994 Technical Report, there are 529 Master's institutions, which shows that only 27% of the institutions in this category are represented on the WWW. There are a total of 435 Master's I and 94 Master's II institutions, but only 135 Master's I and 9 Master's II were present in this WWW study.
Who created the site?
Although smaller in number, those Master's institutions with WWW sites were created primarily by Academic Computing (or similar department), which is supportive of the overall findings for all college and university WWW sites. It was interesting to find that two of the nine Master's II institutions were created by the business department/college, which may suggest that there is little university-wide participation in developing WWW sites. Again, similar to the overall findings, nearly 50 percent (68 sites out of 144 total) relied on the campus-wide information server (CWIS) as the primary Webmaster.
What type of information is offered?
The survey documented what type of information was offered at each site. We created eight categories to synthesize and compare this information:
Most Master's institutions provided general information about the institution on the site - 97 out of 144 institutions, or 67 percent - but that leaves a great number of sites without any general information about the institution. Access to the library and specific information about departments, schools or colleges also were popular features, which is in harmony with the overall findings. The Master's institutions reported 68 with information about specific areas of study and 64 with access to the library. Nearly as many had some general information about academics -- 59 -- but only nine sites had information for alumnae and 11 had information from the public affairs/public relations office. Almost 30 percent of the Master's University sites had admission information and two had online applications, which is a feature only one other institution type (baccalaureate) offered.
What directory services are available?
The services identified in the survey included a directory of faculty and students (white pages), a directory of home pages, and a campus map. As a group, Master's Universities were strong in offering a directory service to find faculty, students, and administrators and in providing a campus map. Forty-three percent offered a white pages directory and 35 percent had campus maps. The number of Master's university sites with a directory of home pages was less impressive - only 29 percent had home page directories.
What qualities of hypermedia exist?
The survey used a rating system (1=best) to evaluate the level of hypermedia of each site and found that the majority of Master's institutions ranked lower overall in comparison to other types of institutions. Among those Master's institutions who used hypermedia elements, photos and the "mail to" feature were the most popular.
last updated: May 22, 1995