The Mission:
The Best Colleges exists to make sense of the best eduction options. This includes making sense of online and on campus colleges and universities. This includes degree program rankings of strictly online, on campus, and hybrid program rankings.
The Method:
The Best Colleges relies on using various factors when making sense of education options. One effective tool that we use is called the H-Index. The H-Index is a scoring system that keeps track of the number of publications and citations that academics and scientists have had in publications such as professional journals. The H-Index is a reflection of the number of publications, and the number of citations that have each reached the same number.
For example, if a professor has an H-Index of 6, that means that she has published 6 papers, that have each been cited at least 6 times. If she were to publish another paper, her number of citations for each of the seven papers would have to jump to 7 citations each, and then her H-Index would be a 7.
See More at The Ranking Methodology.
We also use College Navigator, and The National Center For Education Statistics for our data, and university and college websites.