Methodology: Best Online Bachelor's Programs Rankings
The new entrants admitted to nearly all ranked programs are predominantly adults aged 25 and older who have some credit already applied toward their degrees. Consequently, the factors U.S. News selected to make comparisons between programs were not measures like high school class rank or standardized test scores. Instead, U.S. News chose factors that weigh how these programs are being delivered and their effectiveness at awarding affordable degrees in a reasonable amount of time.
U.S. News assessed schools based on four general categories. Here is a look at each category and its weight in the current rankings formula. All are unchanged from 2014.
• Student engagement (40 percent): Quality bachelor's degree programs promote participation in courses, allowing students opportunities to readily interact with their instructors and classmates, as is possible in a campus-based setting. In turn, instructors not only are accessible and responsive, but they also are tasked with helping to create an experience rewarding enough that students stay enrolled and complete their degrees in a reasonable amount of time.
• Faculty credentials and training (20 percent): Strong online programs employ instructors with academic credentials that mirror those of instructors for campus-based programs, and they have the resources to train these instructors on how to teach distance learners.
• Peer reputation (20 percent): A survey of high-ranking academic officials helps account for intangible factors affecting program quality that are not captured by statistics. Also, degrees from programs that are well respected by academics may be held in higher regard among employers.
• Student services and technology (20 percent): Programs that incorporate diverse online learning technologies allow greater flexibility for students to take classes from a distance. Outside of classes, strong support structures provide learning assistance, career guidance and financial aid resources commensurate with quality campus-based programs.
How the Rankings Were Calculated
U.S. News selects factors, known as ranking indicators, to assess each program in the categories outlined above. A program's score for each ranking indicator is calculated using data that the program reported to U.S. News in a statistical survey. The value for each ranking indicator is standardized about its mean to account for statistical variance.
U.S. News multiplies these standardized values by weights it has selected for the ranking indicators and then sums these values to compute the five separate category scores. Each of these category scores is rescaled for display purposes on usnews.com so that the top-scoring school receives a display score of 100 and the bottom-scoring school receives a display score of zero.
To produce the overall scores, U.S. News takes the raw category scores before they have been rescaled and multiplies them by the category weights detailed above. The resulting scores are then rescaled from zero to 100.
Numerical rankings are assigned to programs in descending order of their overall scores, with the highest-scoring program ranked No. 1. Schools with tied scores are tied in the rankings.
Programs whose overall scores are in the bottom 25 percent are categorized as Rank Not Published. U.S. News calculates numerical ranks for these schools but does not publish them.
For the 2015 rankings, 10 schools are designated as unranked because they reported having fewer than 10 students enrolled or because their programs were less than a year old at the time of data collection. U.S. News did not calculate a numerical rank for these schools.
All unranked and Rank Not Published programs are still listed in the searchable directory.
Data Collection
Gathering the information necessary to create the 2015 Best Online Bachelor's Programs rankings required two steps. Step one was compiling a list of schools offering bachelor's degree programs online. Step two was collecting data from these schools.
To complete step one, U.S. News sent statistical questionnaires to regionally accredited public, private and for-profit institutions granting bachelor's degrees. Respondents were asked if they would be offering a bachelor's degree program through Internet-based distance education courses in the 2014-2015 academic year.
U.S. News defines a distance education program as follows (along the same lines as the U.S. Department of Education's definition):
A program for which all the required course work for program completion is able to be completed via distance education courses that incorporate Internet-based learning technologies. Distance education courses are courses that deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor synchronously or asynchronously. Note: Requirements for coming to campus for orientation, testing or academic support services do not exclude a program from being classified as an online bachelor's degree program.
Between the start of data collection in July 2014 and the September 2014 closing date, 296 schools, or 17 percent of schools surveyed, said they would be offering online bachelor's degree programs in accordance with the definition, while the rest either said they would not or chose not to respond. This count is up from 283 the previous year.
To complete step two, U.S. News used the same questionnaire to collect additional statistical information from the 296 schools with online programs. This information was scored as outlined in the table below. (Note: All student and faculty statistical data are for the July 1, 2013, to June 30, 2014, cohorts, while the remaining data reflect policies, services and technologies in place at the time of the questionnaire completion in summer 2014.) taken by/usnews.com
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