How Top Universities In The World Are All Using WordPress

Writers Patrick Cohen

There are many organizations out there that rank schools in many ways – and we know that these rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. But for a bit of fun, we took the latest ‘Best Global Universities Rankings‘ from the US News and World Report, to see if we could find ways that each one is using WordPress.

What we have listed is just one example WordPress site from each school – in all cases, there are significantly many more.

This job was made easier because we host sites for or provide plugins to most on the list! 🙂

  1. Harvard University – Harvard Law School Student Orgs  Sites
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT Libraries
  3. Stanford University – Stanford Main Website
  4. University of California – Berkeley – Cal Parents
  5. University of Oxford – University of Oxford IT Services Blogs
  6. California Institute of Technology – Engineering and Science Magazine
  7. University of Cambridge – Clinical School Computing Service
  8. Columbia University – EdBlogs Course Blogs *Hosted by CampusPress
  9. Princeton University – Sites for Departments and Groups
  10. Johns Hopkins University – Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
  11. University of Washington – UW Sites *Hosted by CampusPress and Main Website
  12. Yale University – Yale CampusPress *Hosted by CampusPress
  13. University of Chicago – UChicago Voices *Hosted by CampusPress
  14. University of California – San Francisco – UCSF Prevention Research Center
  15. Imperial College London – ICL Main Website
  16. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor – LSA Sites
  17. University of Pennsylvania – Penn EnerFront *Hosted by CampusPress
  18. University of Toronto – Life at U of T
  19. University College London – City Blogs *Hosted by CampusPress
  20. Cornell University – Emergency Site *Hosted by CampusPress
  21. Northwestern University – NUsites *Hosted by CampusPress
  22. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich – Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
  23. University of Melbourne – 3010 Unimelb Alumni Magazine *Hosted by CampusPress
  24. University of British Columbia – Teaching With WordPress
  25. New York University – NYU Web Publishing Platform
  26. University of California – Santa Barbara – UCSB Sustainability
  27. University of Wisconsin – Madison – Branded Themes
  28. University of Texas – Austin – Texas MBA Insider *Hosted by CampusPress
  29. Washington University in St. Louis – Human Resources *Hosted by CampusPress
  30. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill – Main Website
  31. University of Sydney – Environment Institute 
  32. École Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne – EPFL Innovation Park
  33. University of Copenhagen – Andersson Lab
  34. Boston University – BU Study Abroad
  35. University of Munich – Behaviour and Speciation
  36. King’s College London – King’s Blogs
  37. University of Minnesota – College of Design Sites
  38. National University of Singapore – Blog.nus *Hosted by CampusPress
  39. University of Colorado – Boulder – Bursar’s Office
  40. University of Queensland Australia – Emmanuel College Home Page
  41. Ohio State University – Columbus – The Lantern Student News *Hosted by CampusPress
  42. University of California – Santa Cruz – WordPress For Faculty *Hosted by CampusPress
  43. McGill University – Students’ Society of McGill University

It was interesting searching each of these university websites. For starters, we were surprised that only a few on the list use WordPress for their main top-level website. In a few cases, the only implementations we could find were one-off sites by a faculty or staff member and not part of the institutions’ systems. And quite a few use WordPress Multisite for faculty, department, student, course, and other sites.

But if nothing else, it is clear that the use of WordPress in higher education is strong and pervasive!