COE online programs garner more No. 1 national rankings

While the College of Education at the University of Florida may have America’s best online graduate program in education for the second straight year, according to the latest annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report, what does that say about the college’s individual online degrees programs?

You have to look elsewhere for the answer because U.S. News, widely considered the gold standard of college ranking services, only ranks individual degree programs that are offered in classrooms on campus—not as distance learning offerings. So, a few online resource guides for potential students seeking the right college match for them—face-to-face or online—have filled the gap over the past few years by creating their own college ranking systems for individual online degree programs.

One of the more popular Web-based college ranking services—appropriately named BestColleges.com—has recently rated four UF online Master’s-in-Education degree programs No. 1 in their respective subject areas for 2017. They are:

Education Leadership
Education Technology (a concentration area in Curriculum & Instruction)
Reading & Literacy
Special Education

In the category for doctoral degrees in education, UF’s Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction was rated 15th nationally in its category.

UF also is one 14 institutions listed alphabetically in the BestColleges rankings for Doctorate in Higher Education degrees. BestColleges.com representatives were unavailable at posting time to explain the absence of numerical rankings in this subject area.

The BestColleges.com online rankings, launched in 2014, says its ratings are based on “consistently applied guiding principals including academic quality, affordability and online competency” and “the most recent data available” from the National Center for Education statistics and from the individual schools themselves.