Talk:University College London/Archive 3

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Mahatma Gandhi is not UCL degree holder; University of London graduate

This is an ongoing discussion on the talk page of Mahatma Gandhi's Wikipedia biography. I am pasting the discussion from there so this is on record for appropriate action here.

Mohandas Gandhi went to England and attended classes at University College London. However he did not receive his diploma/certificate/degree papers from UCL but the central collegiate federal University of London (the degree only had UOL suffix not UCL suffix).

Please remove UCL from infobox and only add University of London as he received UOL degree and not UCL degree as was the law and provision at the time Gandhi got his degree.

Until 2008, all internal students and external students received their degree papers from UOL. The power to award degrees "to constituent colleges" started only from year 2008 and not before that. However, even now, graduating students at the college's still have a choice to either receive their own college degree or UOL degree only. The choice is still available for few college's within UOL federation.

Oxford/Cambridge both collegiate central universities don't discriminate within their own college's but degrees are issued centrally and students usually don't mention where they studied. A simple mention of Cambridge/Oxford is enough. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.225.73.69 (talk) 07:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

As per official records and now media reports, Gandhi was not a graduate of University College London. I have checked the records at UCL, Gandhi’s name is nowhere to be found in the surviving class registers for law or any other subject. I also find it absurd, that nowhere in Gandhi's writings/papers/books, is there any mention of his studying at UCL on campus at London. Gandhi got his LLB degree as an external student of University of London, lead college for which was UCL exclusively at that time. My statements are found to be exactly true and have been stated in this media report/news (http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/091009/educ091009_01.html).User:Jbiden (talk)

Request to change education in infobox from UCL LLB to University of London LLB.User:Jbiden (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:48, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Nobody gained a degree from UCL until 2008, prior to that all UCL students gained degrees from the University of London. The article you cite actually days he didn't gain a degree at all, which contradicts your claim that he had an LLB from UoL rather than showing it to be "exactly true".

From the article again, UCL are correct and the newspaper is wrong when it comes to the definition of alumnus – the OED says "A graduate or former student". It had always meant someone who studied somewhere, not necessarily a graduate. Thus Bill Gates is a Harvard alumnus, for example.

The question then is whether Gandhi studied at UCL. The article you cite identifies records for "Gaudhi", which is plausibly identified with Gandhi (a hand written 'n' and 'u' are virtually identical and nobody in London would have been familiar with the name at that time). Given the long-standing tradition that Gandhi attended classes at UCL at the time when "Gaudhi" is recorded as attending, that we know Gandhi was attending classes in London, and the small number of Indians at universities in London then, it seems likely that Gandhi did indeed attend classes at UCL and can thus be accurately described as a UCL alumnus. Robminchin (talk) 15:01, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Robminchin you are quite wrong. See the degree papers that were issued from 1836 to 2008 (from the formation of collegiate federal University of London to when constituent colleges started to award their degrees in their own names). The degree papers clearly state "Having studied external/internal student and passed the approved examinations has this day been admitted by the University of London to the degree to XYZ" (this is what the degree papers look likes since 1836 and now exclusively issued to external students. The format hasn't changed much. UCL was a teaching college but never a university to issue a award/degree papers. The exclusive main reason that constituent colleges chose their own degree awarding powers (since 2008) was to get ahead in the world ranking publications for which it has to be a independent university. The main business of national and worldwide rankings. If Mahatma Gandhi has a degree it was to the admission and degree of UOL and not UCL as the constituent college in 1800's never gave it to Gandhi.

In regards to Bill Gates, he attended Harvard College but dropped out. However Harvard University awarded honorary doctorate degree to Bill Gates and he also gave a commencement speech on that day. Factually, any person who studies at any part for degree at Harvard (undergraduate or graduate or for that matter college or graduate business/law/sciences etc... you get a Harvard University degree and not a seperate degree from its schools. Example law graduate does not get Harvard law school exclusive department degree but a Harvard University degree in law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.210.100.214 (talk) 21:13, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Having said that Robminchin is "quite wrong", the IP then firmly upholds his initial point: degrees were issued by the university not the constituent college. But that's no longer the point at issue, which is whether Gandhi meets the criteria to be listed as a UCL alumnus. The evidence suggests strongly (and yes, "Gaudhi" seems extremely likely to be a misreading – just look at the signature in Gandhi's infobox) that he attended some classes at UCL to complement his legal training at the Inner Temple, but probably didn't gain a formal qualification from either UCL or UoL. If so, that's enough to make him an alumnus: quite apart from the OED definition, WP:ALUMNI states that all ex-students qualify to "be included on an alumni list, regardless of how much time they have spent on a school roll, from one day to several years, and whether or not they graduated".

There's a similar issue with the second name on our list, Alexander Graham Bell, who spent about a year at UCL before emigrating to Canada. Again, he's not a graduate, but he is an alumnus.

However, having argued that both Gandhi and Bell were UCL alumni, and should be listed, I'm not sure that we should be highlighting them quite as prominently as we do at present. In neither case does the college seem to have been a particularly formative influence on the individual's career, and we're not in the PR business. I would propose that we remove the names from the lead list of "Notable people", and also their photos (for some reason we have two identical photos of Bell, in the gallery and in the body of the text). We can leave the names in the classified list of alumni, but perhaps qualify the entry with a brief note to clarify that they weren't graduates. Compare the mention of Sting in University of Warwick#Notable people. GrindtXX (talk) 22:54, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

GrindtXX- The mention of Sting in University of Warwick#Notable people and this seems right. University of London already has a similar thing like this - See University of London#Notable people "35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy filed an application and paid fees for a year's study at the LSE, but later fell ill and left the university without taking a single class." John F. Kennedy's image could not be included under alumni of UOL because he never received a degree and did not even get an honorary doctorate.

However, though neither Mahatma Gandhi or Alexander Graham Bell received their degrees from UCL or not even an honorary doctorate for that matter from UOL. If Gandhi ever had a degree, it is from federal University of London "either way as an external or internal student". UCL with all other constituent colleges just recently got their powers of awarding degrees solely for ranking purposes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:201:4802:1C08:3516:ADB1:A09A:DADD (talk) 16:46, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

The reason John Kennedy couldn't be included as an alumnus of UoL is that he never studied at any UoL college, not that he never received a degree. Had he spent a term studying at LSE and then dropped out without taking any exams, he would be an alumnus of LSE and UoL. Nobody is disputing that if Gandhi had a degree it was from UoL, but that is irrelevant to the evidence that he studied at UCL and is thus accurately described as a UCL alumnus. Having said that, I agree with GrindtXX that Gandhi should not be highlighted in the way he currently is, which does seem to give undue weight to someone who studied at UCL for a fairly brief period.

According to the article quoted earlier [1] Gandhi also passed the UoL matriculation exam. This means he could also be described as UoL alumnus, even if he never graduated. Becoming a UoL student wasn't automatic for UCL students in the 1800s – UoL only became a federal university in 1900 – so he could quite easily have studied at UCL and never become a UoL student. Robminchin (talk) 17:09, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Additionally, Rabindranath Tagore who was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature 1913, also studied at UCL but never got a degree/diploma/certificate. So now, let's proceed ahead and not keep this ongoing discussion forever. For future reference, this entire discussion should be achieved and preserved in the talk page for reference. - Thanks, Jbiden —Preceding undated comment added 13:55, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Why does Mahatma Gandhi article say he has a LLB from UCL. Why are administrators blind to a fraud here? In which year did Gandhi pass the full degree, there is no proof. How is there no talks on this? No discussion? Gandhi gave first-year exams for UOL LLB but no proof that UCL ever awarded degree before 2008. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:201:4005:98E3:5C2:38E9:138C:D10E (talk) 20:40, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

That is a question for the Mahatma Gandhi article's talk page. Robminchin (talk) 22:56, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

The inquiry into UCL's historic links with eugenics, sparked by the London Conference on Intelligence should be mentioned

--Doug Weller talk 16:36, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it should. Why don't you have a stab at it? Robminchin (talk) 04:14, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

GA push

It would be good to raise this article to Good Article status. It was delisted back in 2009 for reasons given at Talk:University College London/GA1. Some things that need addressing to meet the good article criteria are:

• General clean-up of the article to ensure it reads like an encyclopedic article.
• Checking references to see if the links are still live and, if not, fixing them.
• Clean up the alumni section – this should be cut back to the most notable examples; there's already a list article that others can go on. Everyone there should be verifiably associated with UCL.
• Clean up the history section, which is suffering from recentism. Some stuff can be moved to the history of UCL page, but some stuff may need too trivial to even put there.
• As suggested elsewhere on this talk page, something needs to be said about the links to eugenics and the recent investigation of this by UCL.
• Check everything is reliably referenced.

There are probably other things that need addressing that will turn up in the course of doing this. Robminchin (talk) 23:09, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Notable people

As noted in the discussion about Gandhi above, we probably shouldn't be giving as much prominence to people who only studied briefly at UCL as we currently do. Indeed, looking down the list of pictured people, alongside Gandhi who seems to have enrolled for a single class, we have Mill who attended a series of lectures, Holst who took classes in Sanskrit, Tagore and Bell who both dropped out, and Stopes who (according to her Wikipedia page) completed her degree at Birkbeck. While there is no doubt that these people are technically UCL alumni, the preponderence of non-graduates , particularly near the start of the list, makes it look like an attempt to include famous people with any connection to UCL, no matter how tenuous. It would probably improve the page if these people were not given the top billings they currently occupy. What do others think? Robminchin (talk) 00:41, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

As there have been no objections in three weeks, I've removed the non-graduate alumni from the top of the section. Robminchin (talk) 02:51, 4 November 2022 (UTC)