University uses of Twitter

Twitter usage at the top 100 colleges and universities in the country (as determined by U.S. News and World Report 2010 rankings) was studied by UniversitiesAndColleges.org.

Here are some highlights of the study, which looked only at Twitter accounts affiliated with school administrations:

• The University of Florida had the greatest number of accounts with 24. The University of Georgia came in a close second with 22. The average number of Twitter accounts per college was 8.4.
• Of the colleges with the fewest number of accounts, the University of Denver and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry headed the list with just one each.
• Harvard University had the most Twitter followers — 18,955. Stanford University came in second with 10,873.
• Although Harvard had the most followers, the university itself  follows about only 39 other schools.
• The College of William & Mary followed the most accounts — 6,056.
• Who tweets the most? George Washington University, which sends out about 58 tweets each day. Second place goes to the University of Washington with 49.8. Most schools average between zero and 20 total tweets per day.

If you’re wondering what schools are tweeting about, the study determined usage falls into six basic categories:

• Delivering news updates
• News updates within the universities’ schools and departments
• News about student services
• Staying in touch with people outside the university community, such as alumni associations
• Updates on research and campus extensions
• News from university media

To see the methodology and results of the entire study, click here.

It’s interesting to look at institutional uses of social media, however, it’s important to consider that there are a lot of faculty not obviously affiliated with their institutions using twitter for their course work. Student organizations are also using it for a variety of purposes. I would be curious to see more studies that focus on the impact of Twitter and other social networks on student engagement both with course work, and with the university communities.