2016 Best Online Programs Rankings to Launch on Jan. 12

2016 Best Online Programs Rankings to Launch on Jan. 12

The 2016 Best Online Programs rankings will be published on Jan. 12 on usnews.com. The primary audience for these rankings is working adults – often in their 30s or 40s – who may not be able to take classes during the day but still wish to obtain skills and credentials to boost their careers.

U.S. News believes that the Best Online Programs rankings and data are the most comprehensive available to prospective students. More than 1,200 distance education degree programs will be cataloged in the searchable online directory. Included will be a general ranking of schools'online bachelor's degree offerings and discipline-specific rankings of online master's programs inbusiness, engineering, computer information technology, nursing, criminal justice and education.

While other publications that rate online programs either do not use any data or rely on institutional data from the federal government, U.S. News offers prospective students an analytically rigorous assessment based on data specific to schools' distance education degree programs.  

Program-level data matter because students apply to programs, often must meet admissions standards determined by the programs and pay program tuition. Furthermore, schools within colleges and universities often operate relatively independently of each other; this explains how a university can be viewed as being stronger academically for its engineering department, for example, than for its humanities department – or vice versa.

Finally, by focusing only on students and faculty involved in the distance education programs, the Best Online Programs rankings assess what will be most relevant to student experiences.

To earn a high score, an online MBA program, for example, cannot simply bank on its traditional business school's overall reputation if its courses available to distance learners are taught by instructors less credentialed than its full-time program faculty, or if its campus-based academic and career support services are inaccessible to students remotely. 

Beyond the rankings, prospective students can review the searchable directory to explore additional information on such factors as tuition, program offerings and online services offered to enrolled students.

For example, a user can search institutions​ from Missouri that award distance education bachelor's degrees in health services​, compile a list of master's-level teacher education programs charging less than $600 per credit tuition or determine which master's-level ​computer systems analysis programs can be completed without ever setting foot on a campus. 

Following the publication of the Best Online Programs on usnews.com in January, highlights of the rankings will later be included in the "Best Graduate Schools 2017" and "Best Colleges 2017" guidebooks.