Brown is best
Sick of all those magazine and newspaper supplements devoted to rating the world's top universities? It's the same old thing every year: the depth and breadth of the academic staff, the size of the campus, the wealth of the alumni… Tired of this, Rainy Day has come up with a new kind of ranking — website attractiveness. After all, if institutions can't make their windows on the world eye-catching, something must be wrong. Our first effort in this new field features a global Top Ten in descending order of merit:
10. Universiteit Rotterdam: Monotonous. Yes, research is a sober topic and a university's website should convey how seriously it takes its mission, but Erasmus elevates earnestness to a new level of dullness.
9. University of Oxford: Unimaginative. With its reputation and its resources, Oxford should be able to do much better. That it doesn't is disappointing.
8. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Solid. On the face of it, a rather uninviting homepage but lots of mouse-over links are built in and the visitor is given a range of navigational options that illustrate the diversity of the university's programs.
7. Universita di Bologna: Colourful. At what point does information presentation become information overload? That's the danger here, but Bologna deserves praise for offering what it has in a tasteful manner and there are extra points for the English and Chinese versions.
6. The University of Tokyo: Factual. Not very inspiring, perhaps, but the Tokyo site is easy to use and it marks a departure from what we've previously seen in that it has chosen (wisely, we feel) to opt for a narrower layout instead of the full-page width that Rotterdam, Oxford, Berlin and Bologna go with.
5. Université Paris-Sorbonne: Minimalist. There's a lot to be said for a homepage that offers an overview of what can be found on a site. We know that the Sorbonne website must be vast so there's no point in trying to cover it at the outset. Points were deducted for the silly scrolling marquee and for having the Abu Dhabi Campus site open a new window.
4. Harvard University: Modest. The name alone suggests that this website must be in a class of its own, but Harvard knows that there's more to its institution than can ever be captured by one medium so, rather cleverly, it goes for a back-to-basics look and feel. This is a smart way of dealing with information excess.
3. The London School of Economics: Excellent. The compact nature of the presentation suggests a practical approach to academic issues for professional students who do not have time to waste. This conciseness is replicated throughout the LSE site.
2. Universidad de Salamanca: Beautiful. Some would expect an institution as ancient as the University of Salamanca to have a website that's more mediaeval than modern, but it isn't so. Yes, one can grumble about the tiny fonts used for some of the sub-navigation and the many windows spawned by the site, but somehow all these elements add to the challenge of negotiating one's way through a centuries-old labyrinth of learning.
1.Brown University: The winner! The colour that is the college's name has to be part of the site, but look at how beautifully it's integrated, especially when you mouse-over any of the links. And notice how smooth everything is? Flash? No. Just HTML. But have a peek at the source code and notice what kind of HTML it is. Truly sensational coding! None of the other universities in our ranking come close to Brown in making better use of the web in terms of structure and content. Apart from its website, Brown delivers the academic goods and is in 15th position in the US News 2007 ranking of US colleges.
Princeton, which tops the US News 2007 list, will be included in the next Rainy Day university (website) ranking.
