Few months ago, PC Magazine and The Princeton Review revealed the America’s Top Wired Colleges, 2008 Edition. It was interesting to see which universities were made the list. In order to rank America’s Top Wired Colleges, The Princeton Review contacted 368 colleges featured in the 2009 edition of The Best 368 Colleges to complete an online survey. The survey contained 18 questions that were grouped into categories of academics, student resources, tech support, and infrastructure. Each question was assigned a point value and weighting, and each of the overall categories was assigned a weighting. Based on these data, they came up the top 20 most wired campuses.
The table below shows the top 20 high-tech colleges of 2008. In addition, it provides the 2006 ranking for your comparison. I was not surprised by the top rank, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, the high-tech poster child, MIT, dropped from #2 in 2006 to #20 in 2008.
Source: http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/21/0,1425,i=219119,00.gif
美國前20大網路最完善學校，以問卷中明列18個關於問題，包括大學網路學習資源（academics；如線上是否隨時可下載課程資料）、學生資源（student resources；如課堂提供筆記型電腦及ipod、P2P)networks）、技術支援（tech support；如24小時維修與諮詢）、公共建設（如Wi-Fi無線寬頻，或是到處有學生之處皆有電腦可提供使用）等。台灣不知未來有否此種排名，可加強各學校對網路建置之積極性，與師生使用之方便性。
Sad that many people only read the Princeton Review to find out who won first place for best party school. Yet, for the serious student, I believe that the wired ranking is as important as class size and strength of program. Especially as schools compete for students, available on-campus technology could give one instution that slight edge.
I am pleased to see that people are beginning to notice, and campus technology now has a ranking in this publication. I think we will see more of this in the future.