2011 Top Online Unis...Sort of

[Albert Hidel]

The 2011 top ten ONLINE degree program providers are:
1. University of London, #1 in the world for eight consecutive years.
2. University of South Africa, #1 in Africa.
3. University of Southern Queensland, #1 in Australasia.
4. University of Phoenix, #1 in America. Largest university in North America that made being online legitimate. Copied but not eclipsed.
5. Jones International University, conceived, created, and designed to be a world leader in online higher education.
6. Golden Gate University, a downtown San Francisco trolley car school that has international and worldwide appeal.
7. University of Liverpool, an international school with appeal to American students for both traditional and online programs.
8. Ellis College of NYIT, a northeast, USA competitive giant with programs, faculty and marketing to go with...
9. University of Maryland College Park, Made study abroad fashionable. Online programs and faculty are highly competitive.
10. Drexel University, a class performer that has sought to make their online programs among the best in the world.

Let's compare that list to the OEDb list from 2010:

1 National University
2 Southern New Hampshire University
3 Golden Gate University
4 Regent University
5 Colorado State University
6 Saint Leo University
7 Colorado Technical University
8 Liberty University
9 Jones International University
10 Walden University

Jones and Golden Gate make both lists. Ellis was 34 on the OEDb list, while UoPhoenix, Drexel and UMUC were nowhere to be found.

GGU is known to be a good school, but I'd say Jones is the real sleeper. You don't see a lot of comments on the boards about it, compared to, say, Aspen (#57) or Columbia Southern (#54), and not as heavily advertised as AICU (#58) or Kaplan (#45).

According to their website, Jones is "the first university anywhere to exist completely online" and "the first fully online university in the U.S. to be accredited by [NCACS]." Who knew?