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Template discussion regarding Washington Monthly rankings

Interested editors are invited to look at "Template talk:Infobox US university ranking#Washington Monthly should be removed" to opine on usage of Washington Monthly rankings. – S. Rich (talk) 02:35, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Linda Katehi: Work

Hello, I am an employee of UC Davis, here on the college's behalf. I left a message on the [[Linda Katehi] discussion page earlier this week about improving the part of the article titled Work, but received no response. After looking at the discussion page for UC Davis I came across this Wikiproject and thought maybe someone here would be interested.

As an employee of the college, I realize I should not make any edits to Linda Katehi's page myself. Can any editors here look over the material I've put together? I’ve rewritten the Work section of the article, so that it includes missing footnotes and some minor edits where I could not find footnotes. You can see what I've put together here on the discussion page.

Thank you for looking at this, LindaF UC Davis (talk) 22:58, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit warring to replace university infobox with non-profit infobox

Can others please take a look at recent edits made by Twillisjr? He or she is edit warring to replace the Template:Infobox university with the more generic Template:Infobox non-profit in multiple articles e.g., Liberty University, Alliant International University. I've asked him or her to stop making these edits until they're discussed but he or she is continuing to edit war on this issue. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 05:35, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

As previously stated, the Internal Revenue Service documentation (FORM 990), as cited, expresses the venue(s) as 501(c)3 organizations. Therefore, the proper template is, the Non-Profit template. Twillisjr (talk) 05:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There are several major problems with the approach Twillisjr is taking. Firstly ElKevbo is entirely correct under WP:BRD in reverting these edits and asking that they be discussed. Secondly Twillisjr seems to be relying on primary sources, contrary to WP:PRIMARY. Thirdly the approach he is taking is US-centric, as 501(c)(3) is a purely US categorisation. Fourthly US universities are 501(c)(3) exempt (see, for example, this page from Harvard [1]), so this is hardly an either/or matter. It may be that the bodies in question are not universities, but that needs to be established, not just asserted: an IRS form might perhaps be usable to demonstrate that an organisation is 501(c)(3) exempt, but it cannot be used to demonstrate that an organisation is not a university. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 06:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Clearly something can be a university and a non-profit. The university template should take precedence unless another wikiproject would like to present a reasoned argument to us. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:17, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Twillisjr is way off base, both in the content of the dispute and the way he's handling it. University template all around. Under his logic, {{Infobox restaurant}} should always be replaced by {{Infobox business}}.
Agree with university boxes as the way to go. As far as I have ever known, we use the most finite box we can. Meaning that although it is a nonprofit organization, the university infobox is more closely suited to the article. The organization is both nonprofit and a university so it could take either but we have always used the more finite one. Also Twillisjr's defense in many of the edits is See: nonprofit, which does not appear to be anything based on WP:NONPROFIT as this does not discuss infoboxes at all. So if it is a reference to something outside WP policy, it has no bearing. Chris1834 (talk) 02:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree that University box should be used. This is a large enough universe of institutions to deserve their own info-box. There's no reason that universities or other organizational types that often include not for profits should have to use the least common denominator. (Not a member of this project, led here by following comments in a different RFC. Just my two cents.) --Federalist51 (talk) 01:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Input requested at Alabama State University article

Can someone please provide some input into the recent edits made to Alabama State University? Another editor appears to disagree with content in the article but doesn't seem to be interested in discussing his or her disagreements in Talk so additional input would be most welcome. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 22:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Western State College of Law at Argosy University

Hi, I'm hoping that someone from this wikiproject can help with a request I posted a little while ago on the Western State College of Law at Argosy University Talk page. I've written a new draft for the Western State article to address a few issues. The current article is generally in need of cleanup to meet Wikipedia standards and add better sourcing. I've aimed to address these and other more specific issues with the new draft.

Up to now, one editor has reviewed my draft and offered some feedback, which I have incorporated. As this editor has not been back to the discussion for a bit and I'd like to ask if any editors from here can also review this request and my draft and let me know what they think. Ultimately I'm looking for an editor who would be willing to move the new draft live if they agree that it's an improvement. As I've prepared this draft on behalf of Education Management Corporation, the school's parent company, I have a COI and for that reason I won't make any direct edits to the article.

My full request is on the article's Talk page here. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can give, 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 23:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge: Senzoku Gakuen College of Music to Senzoku Gakuen Junior College

Interested editors, please see the merge proposal at Talk:Senzoku Gakuen Junior College#Another merge from College of Music. Cnilep (talk) 03:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

List of colleges and universities by endowment

Feedback, comments, or suggestions would be appreciated on the talk page of List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment for either the discussions about changing the cutoff for the table or the exclusive use of NACUBO values. Thank you. CrazyPaco (talk) 19:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

List of junior colleges in Japan

The list List of junior colleges in Japan seems rather indiscriminate, and duplicates Category:Japanese junior colleges. Comments on disposition of the article are welcome at Talk:List of junior colleges in Japan#Better as a category? Cnilep (talk) 05:01, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Use of definite article in naming Universities

A user, User:14.198.220.253, has suggested removing the long-standing guideline "When in doubt, do not use the definite article for universities." on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name). They have so far provided minimal explanation of why. Additional viewpoints on the talk page would be appreciated. (also posted to Wikipedia talk:Article titles) 63.251.123.2 (talk) 22:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

College basketball navigation templates

Please join the discussion at the College Basketball Wikiproject for forming a consensus on the creation of a basic navigation template for college basketball teams. CrazyPaco (talk) 09:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

'WikiProject universities and colleges

Shouldn't this project be named WikiProject universities and colleges? Just curious. XOttawahitech (talk) 01:32, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Concerns about a recent edit to Thunderbird School of Global Management

Hello, I'm currently working on behalf of the Thunderbird School of Global Management to improve their Wikipedia article by bringing it into compliance with Wikipedia's guidelines about proper sourcing, neutral tone, etc. Because of my financial conflict of interest, I never make edits myself; instead, I reach out to editors and ask them to take a look at the work I've done, implementing it if it seems appropriate. Which brings me to why I'm here…

Over the weekend, there was an edit made to the Thunderbird article that I have some concerns about, which I detailed over at Talk:Thunderbird. If editors have a chance to take a look and see what they think, I'd appreciate it! Cheers, ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:08, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Delete University of/College of when Alphabetizing?

If I have a list of Universities that include some that are University of X or College of Y, do I delete the "University of"/"College Of". In other words, which is preferred

  • University of Arizona
  • Brigham Young University
  • University of California
  • Dartmouth College
  • College of William and Mary

OR

  • Brigham Young University
  • College of William and Mary
  • Dartmouth College
  • University of Arizona
  • University of California.

I prefer the first. Note this is for reorganizing an article where *neither* order is used (and I added most of them a while ago).Naraht (talk) 03:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I've seen it done both ways and they're both defensible and reasonable. Pick one and be consistent. It may be helpful to look at other lists in Wikipedia to see if we've already arrived at a de facto consensus e.g., the many lists of colleges and universities in U.S. states, lists of colleges and universities in particular countries. ElKevbo (talk) 01:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Sexual assault controversy in UNC article

Can a few folks please take a gander at the latest conversation at Talk:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? A few of us are discussing whether information about a sexual assault controversy and subsequent national fallout should be included in that article. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 01:57, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

A highly selective institution

I know this is somewhat off-topic and irreverent, but I couldn't resist sharing this recent segment from the Colbert Report about how Walmart has now leapt over HYP in terms of selectivity in admitting candidates. Keep on fighting the good fight against creeping boosterism and happy holidays! Madcoverboy (talk) 04:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Travel and Leisure rankings of U.S. campuses

One or more editors recently added material to article from Travel + Leisure's rankings of "America's Most Beautiful College Campuses" and "America's Ugliest College Campuses" (e.g., Berry College, Georgia State University). Discussion over one of these edits has begun in one article's Talk page but given the number of articles affected it seems better to have a larger discussion in a centralized location.

I propose removing these sources from all of the articles to which they were added. To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of the methodology behind these rankings is: "We consulted the Princeton Review, Unigo.com, and other forums where students hotly debate all aspects of campus life." Unless there is additional evidence supporting the noteworthiness of these rankings, particularly other reliable sources or experts who have used or cited them, it's undue weight to even mention them in a legitimate encyclopedia article. ElKevbo (talk) 16:09, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that this is a misapplication of WP:UNDUE. Travel+Leisure is a reputable publication and would seem to me to qualify as a reliable source, especially for something like whether a particular location is attractive or unattractive. I don't see any indication that its selection of the "ugliest" and "most beautiful" college campuses in the country are exactly minority views. Contrary to what is claimed above, a quick search on Google or Bing shows that both the "most beautiful" and "ugliest" campus lists from T+L were reported by many national, regoinal and local news and other reliable sources. So they are newsworthy and notable. I don't think that it is up to editors to exclude a source because they don't like its method or selection criteria. By this standard, nearly every article about colleges needs to be stripped of the long list of "ratings" from a variety of sources, every one of which could be criticized for exactly the same reason.Banks Irk (talk) 20:08, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
First, it would be most helpful if you could provide some examples of the "many national, regoinal [sic] and local news and other reliable sources" that have reported on this information especially if those examples are substantive and not mere press releases or filler articles. In summary, my objection is that this isn't serious scholarship or journalism but insubstantial material intended solely to attract readers and drive up ad revenue; we do our readers a disservice by republishing this information as if it were scholarship, journalism, or even widespread shared opinion or knowledge. Second, if there are other rankings in articles that are similarly flimsy and unsubstantial then please feel free to challenge them or boldly remove them! ElKevbo (talk) 20:18, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Just a quick glance at the first few pages of the 48,900 hits at Google includes these articles being reported by NBC News, Slate, Huffington Post, TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press), Business Insider, as well as, obviously, a lot of college and local press either celebrating or lamenting the rating. Banks Irk (talk) 20:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with User:ElKevbo. Rating a college campus as "most beautiful" or "ugliest" is very subjective and these ratings should not be included in these articles. If a college is not effective at educating their students and those findings may be verified by multiple independent sources, then that would be notable and should be included. However, if a random magazine likes or dislikes the appearance of a college campus, and several news outlets simply repeat those subjective opinions, then that is not notable. - Mistercontributer (talk) 02:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
To clarify, this magazine is a reliable source which published an article based on subjective opinions, such as a reliable newspaper publishing an opinion piece, which we should not use as a reference to support a statement of fact. The statements made are based on someone's opinion, which cannot be proven or verified (such as "ugliest" campus). If these statements and references are included in these articles, then the article should clearly state these ratings are based on the author's opinion, as required by source guidelines. - Mistercontributer (talk) 23:12, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Huh? It's a fact that "Travel + Leisure ranks XXX campus as YYY." Of course, you can't write "XXX campus is YYY"--GrapedApe (talk) 04:01, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • In a month of discussion, there doesn't appear to be a consensus one way or the other. In light of the lack of consensus on removal of this source, I will gradually finish up adding this citation to the remaining college and university articles that I haven't gotten to yet. I'll leave it to editors of the individual articles to remove it or not. Banks Irk (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Potentially spam edits

I reverted edits by User:Samhall69 to University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Harvard Business School, all unsourced and mentioning the placings of the institution on a listing of number of millionaire graduates. This doesn't seem to be a major fact worth mentioning. What do others think? Itsmejudith (talk) 17:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't seem like something worth mentioning in most college and university articles. It's vaguely interesting trivia but it's clear what readers are supposed to learn from the material. There are an infinite number of facts and lists and rankings and such that can and have been compiled about colleges and universities but that doesn't obligate us to include every one of them even if they are published in reliable sources. ElKevbo (talk) 20:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Bournemouth University

This article on a UK university is pretty weak. A new editor added a lot of material, which seemed to be promotional. I went to WPLCOIN, the editor came along, admitted to being an employee, and we are now interacting on the talk page. It would be great if any project members could drop by and make suggestions. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:23, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

"Globis University Graduate School of Management"

Globis University Graduate School of Management: spam, spam, spam, spam ahem, let me agf that: An apparent possibility of a non-neutral point of view. (As I discover when it's already past my bedtime, sorry.) -- Hoary (talk) 14:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I've already started to go through this. There's lots more to be done, and other disinterested editors are most welcome to join me. -- Hoary (talk) 02:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
I've gone through the article. It's a mess, but I think and hope less of one than it was before I started. Over to you experts. -- Hoary (talk) 09:52, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Please assist in revising Texas Health and Science University Page

The Texas Health and Science University Wikipedia page requires assistance in revision so that it may meet Wikipedia standards. Presently the page has five issues listed:

"]This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This article appears to be written like an advertisement. (October 2013) A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (October 2013) This article relies on references to primary sources. (October 2013) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for companies and organizations. (October 2013) This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. (October 2013)"

Please advise me on how I might revise the article to resolve these issues.

[[2]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by MandarinLibrarian (talk • contribs) 16:25, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Use clear, simple language, please?

I'm one of those people who use Wikipedia a lot and frequently make small edits for grammar and clarity. In the articles in this project, I often find academic language that is unnecessarily opaque and hard to understand. I'll fix it when I can, but when you folks are creating or editing articles, please consider that your audience is not necessarily academic or used to deciphering convoluted paragraphs. They may in fact be schoolchildren. Please write so that a middle school student can understand what you wrote. It can be done. If we can master academic language we can master clear, simple English. Sylvia A (talk) 21:19, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

These are articles about universities, so there will be a few technical terms, like "accreditation", "sorority", "alumnus", "campus". I hope that a middle school student would enjoy reading one our articles, but they may need to use a dictionary from time to time. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Sylvia. I have noticed a lot of academia-speak that is not clear. --GrapedApe (talk) 22:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
Examples of what sort of jargon you and Sylvia are referring to would be helpful. Esrever (klaT) 14:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm all in favor of clear, simple language. Wondering what you had in mind, I looked at your list of contributions. The request above is your latest. The latest but one is this one (to National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, an article I do not think I have ever edited). Your edit has a promising summary: Did some rewriting of the intro for clarity. It was written in academese. Not everybody reading these things is fluent in that dialect.
I normally refrain from questioning the prose of others, but you've brought up the matter. So: I see no removal of or translation from academese. (If I'm wrong, please specify the academese.) I can't see any improvement. Please explain what kind of opacity is fixed by saying that colleges are institutions or replacing simple "for" with "formed for the purpose of", and tell us about the dialectal fluency that's no longer required thanks to your edit.
Yes, I do realize that "for" is polysemic whereas "formed for the purpose of" is less so, and therefore that machine translation and similar processes may work better with the latter. But this isn't an issue that you've brought up. -- Hoary (talk) 08:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC) ... tweaked 13:24, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Looking for editors to help with Thunderbird School of Global Management

Hello, I'm currently working on behalf of the Thunderbird School of Global Management to update their page, bringing it in line with Wikipedia's policies about sourcing and neutral language. Due to my financial COI, I won't be making any edits to the page directly. Instead, I've posted a request over at Talk:Thunderbird with some details about why I think the article needs to be updated, and linking to the draft in my userspace. If an editor or two from this WikiProject was willing to take a look and see about helping out, I'd sure appreciate it. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 13:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here. One thing you could do, on behalf of this project if you like, is to re-order the sections in the article, following WP:UNIGUIDE. "History" should come first, followed by "Campus" (or "sites", "locations", whichever applies best). If you can direct us to any independent sources such as press coverage, that would also help. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi Itsmejudith, thanks for your feedback. I did use WP:UNIGUIDE as a model for how to structure my draft, although I did depart from it a bit in places where it seemed appropriate—for example, since Thunderbird is specifically a business school, I opted for "Programs" instead of "Academics", as it seemed a bit more accurate and to the point.
Regarding news coverage, I've included most of the coverage that I could find as citations in the draft in my userspace. Cheers! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 17:18, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
 Done! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 20:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Self promotion

Hi there! Can someone from this wikiproject take a look at the University of Oregon page? There are several parts that look like self promotion, such as this section. Thanks. JohnMcButts (talk) 18:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree. In addition to the bias language, the references are not formatted correctly. I recommend removing this section due to these multiple issues. - Mistercontributer (talk) 03:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Concerning edits to Corinthian Colleges‎ article

Can we please get a few more eyeballs on Corinthian Colleges‎? I'm concerned about one or more unregistered editors who are being somewhat aggressive in their edits with very strong hints of ownership that may even lean toward legal threats. The content of their edits isn't (yet) particularly problematic but he or she isn't reacting very well to my suggestions to tone down the aggression. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 03:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Houstonian

I've recently gone ahead and created an article about the newspaper, The Houstonian (newspaper).

Help with suggestions for additional secondary sources would be appreciated at the article's talk page, at Talk:The Houstonian (newspaper).

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 03:31, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to User Study

Would you be interested in participating in a user study? We are a team at University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within a Wikipedia community. We are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visualization tool. All you need to do is to prepare for your laptop/desktop, web camera, and speaker for video communication with Google Hangout. We will provide you with a Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 13:08, 18 February 2014 (UTC).

University of Wisconsin–Whitewater

It would be nice to have another set of eyes look at the Controversy section of this article. Does it have the proper tone, emphasis, and style? Thanks. 69.183.116.98 (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry that you haven't had a reply until now. I don't think it is relevant for the article at the moment since the lawsuit was dismissed. If a lawsuit is eventually upheld, then it is probably a notable fact for the article. Even then, it shouldn't be a section in its own right, but should be part of the section on the Royal Purple newspaper. You don't need to include all the detail. There may be other, more interesting information about the student newspaper. Hope that helps. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:25, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

What is a scientist?

Just to let you know that a discussion is ongoing at: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_scientists#What_is_a_scientist.3F and that it appears that as a result(?) the article Scientists has been changed. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:09, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Faculties of University of Rajshahi

Hello WikiProject Universities. The article on Faculties of University of Rajshahi could use some experienced attention. The article seems to keep getting longer and is coming off as more of a promotional college admissions packet than as an article about a school or its facilities. The main contributor does not have too much experience, appears to have a little difficulty with English, and may need some help from the community to better focus the article on its intended purpose. Thanks,, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:17, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I was just going to say the same thing. It appears that the user intends to put the entire university catalog in that article. Cnilep (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh dear. Based on Cyphoidbomb's remark that the user "appears to have a little difficulty with English", I Googled a few phrases and easily found passages copied from various university department web sites. I'll tag the article for copyright investigation. Cnilep (talk) 03:56, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

List of Rutgers University people

I'd like to clean up and develop the List of Rutgers University people since it is largely unformatted and is subject to deterioration because of its lack of structure, format, and criteria. I would like to ask the community for solutions and ideas on what would be the best way to present this large list of information.

It's a quandary, and I'd like to have a few informed ideas, perhaps being pointed to some good practices at other university's alumni/faculty/people lists, and explore this before I go forward on improving the list. Thanks in advance.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:53, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education entry

Ginevradabenci (talk) 10:50, 12 March 2014 (UTC)Please could you reconsider the classification of this article. It is definitely not a stub. Taking account of the issues flagged up, I would estimate that it merits a B rating.

I have updated the article with accurate information, but as an employee of the organization, I can't resolve the issues flagged up. If anyone else is willing and able to do so, that would be great. Thanks.

Crime and public safety or the Clery Act

I think a section on Crime and public safety (Clery Act or something of that nature) would be useful to our readers for many articles on universities. There has been considerable media and regulatory attention to such matters, for example, an article and commenatary in Atlantic magazine, and the regulations under the Clery Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1092(f), see Cornell law School Legal information website, summary at the Clery Center website and statute at the same. Disclosure: I work at a small college. Bearian (talk) 21:14, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

  • I think that using statistics created under the Clery Act could be helpful in building a Crime and public safety section for a university.--GrapedApe (talk) 02:24, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Not sure about adding it to every page but might be useful to note that every college that accepts Title IV aid must publish an annual Safety and Security report with detailed information on campus security statistics and procedures. I believe most colleges have opted to make this report available to the general public on their website though the regs do not specifically call for that. The data that is available to everyone is summary data at http://www.ope.ed.gov/security/ MlaneNYIT (talk) 14:57, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Two new proposed sections for the article guidelines

I've proposed new material for this project's article guidelines in the talk page. Please stop by and provide input. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 02:33, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

University Canada West

Can we get a few from here to take a look at Talk:University Canada West#Not accurate or unbiased. -- Moxy (talk) 21:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Any updates? Goburst (talk) 05:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Is the University Canada West Wikipedia page undue?

Please take a look at the University "Talk" page chapters 34 and on. . . Talk University Canada West

Kind Regards, Goburst (talk) 05:32, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

apology at Johns Hopkins University

There's been a back-and-forth about some content on the Johns Hopkins University article. I'd be happy to have other editors chime in. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:38, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

It's difficult to "chime in" when no one involved in the dispute has so much as started a discussion in Talk. :( ElKevbo (talk) 03:11, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Help create a consensus around University Canada West Wikipedia

Hello, we are trying to form a consensus around the university Canada west Wikipedia page. Currently there are two active editors myself and another; this is not a consensus and the article has been unduly operating for some time. Look forward to your contributions. --Goburst (talk) 18:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

A request for comments on the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater article has been posted on the article's talk page. Please contribute your thoughts and ideas. 71.139.142.29 (talk) 14:31, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

It would be helpful to have additional eyes on Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and List of Wharton School alumni. A lot of brand-new single-purpose accounts have popped up at both articles recently. There appears to be a lot of WP:BOOSTERISM in the articles that has been removed and then put back in by some SPAs. Some edits are fine, some are not. The ones that are not may simply be the result of new editors learning their way around. But because of the unusual number of new editors, I was hoping others can help keep tabs on the article. Thanks, Bahooka (talk) 21:47, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Rockland Community College

An editor employed by the college added material to the college's article which I removed[3], partially because it was copyvio and a large amount of material was removed with no explanation, and partly because the History section read:

Rockland Community College was founded on a dream. Lester Rounds, a local school superintendent, proposed the idea for an affordable, grassroots, two-year college in his doctoral dissertation for Columbia University. Amid stirrings of Rockland County's conversion from sleepy hinterland to bustling suburbia along with a burgeoning school-age population, spiraling college costs, and growing need for advanced skills, Rounds and other forward-thinkers spent five years bringing the dream to fruition. In the fall of 1959, Rockland Community College opened its doors to 139 students: 87 men and 52 women, 119 full-time and 20 part-time. They were high school graduates eager to capitalize on an affordable, two-year alternative at their doorstep. They were homemakers with children to care for. They were veterans thankful for a second chance.

The editor has posted to my talk page and I'm copying that post here, asking others to comment - I'll tell him the main discussion is here.

Mr. Weller, The information I entered on the entry for Rockland Community College was removed by User:Dougweller. The reason given was that copyright material was added without permission from the copyright holder. The information I added is attributed to the following sources:

1) Rockland Community College Catalog 2012-2014. This book was produced by RCC Campus Communications. I am employed by RCC Campus Communications and was authorized by the head of the department to make changes to the RCC Wikipedia entry. Since we produced the catalog, and I am using material from that catalog, can we not use that information?

2) "Rockland Community College: The Early Years," by Jamie Kempton, The Donning Company, 2000. I am the author of this book. I used some information from this book for the Wikipedia entry. Is that not permissible?

3) RCC Institutional Research, Jim Robertson, Director, Fall 2013 statistical information. I drew some statistical information from our Institutional Research department for the Academics section of the Wikipedia entry.

Our goal is to remove inaccurate, extraneous and outdated information currently existing in this Wikipedia entry for Rockland Community College, streamline the entry down to basic information about our college, and include a link to our website.

Kindly let me know how I can do that within the parameters set forth by Wikipedia.

Thanks very much. JamesGKempton (talk) 7:18 pm, Today (UTC+1) James G. (Jamie) Kempton Rockland Community College Campus Communications

Looking at the talk page I see a 4 year old post about college staff adding promotional material. Dougweller (talk) 18:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Even if the school has indeed provided permission for anyone to use their text (by releasing it under a free license), the fact is that the text that user wants to add is a pretty clear violation of WP:NPOV. It needs to be reworded for objectivity, not promotional material. Esrever (klaT) 19:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback on my suggested changes to the page. I would like to revise the edits and suggest the following:

Infobox Student Enrollment: Change from 8,750 to 7,651. Source: RCC Institutional Research Dept., Jim Robertson, Director, Fall 2013 Quick Facts

Lead Line 3 (Sentence 3): "The college offers 52 programs and offers both certificates and associates degrees." This information is outdated. The college offers 51 programs. Thus: "The college offers 51 programs and offers both associate's degrees and certificates." Source: RCC Course Catalog 2012-2014, page 7; Facts About Rockland Community College, RCC website (www.sunyrockland.edu)

Lines 6-7 (Sentence 5): "The current enrollment is about 8,000 full and part-time students..." According to the Fall 2013 Quick Facts produced by the RCC Institutional Research Dept., Jim Robertson, Director, the number of full- and part-time students is 7,651. Thus the sentence should read: "The current enrollment is about 7,500 full- and part-time students,..." Source: RCC Institutional Research Dept., Jim Robertson, Director, Fall 2013 Quick Facts

Lines 7-8 (Sentence 6): The main campus is in Suffern, New York, but instructions are also offered in Haverstraw and Spring Valley extensions." Since the Spring Valley extension campus no longer exists, the sentence should read: "The main campus is in Suffern, NY, but instruction is also offered at an extension site in Haverstraw."

Lines 8-9 (Sentence 7): "The Spring Valley satellite campus is located in the historic North Main Street School.[1]" The Spring Valley satellite campus no longer exists. Thus, this sentence should be removed, as should the photograph of the Spring Valley satellite campus.

History Third paragraph, first sentence: "Rockland Community College came eighteen years later was organized to be an affordable, two-year college in location convenient for county residents; it was planned that it would raise taxes by only $4 a year." A word is omitted here. Sentence should read: "Rockland Community College came eighteen years later and was organized to be an affordable, two-year college in location convenient for county residents; it was planned that it would raise taxes by only $4 a year."

Other events "On January 30, 2011, Rockland Community College held a ceremonial swearing of David Carlucci, Independent democrat from New City, an alumnus of Rockland Community College (class 0f 2000) and youngest senator to be elected in New York history representing the New York Senate 38th district." It was a swearing-in ceremony, not a swearing ceremony. This individual was sworn in is an Independent Democrat (capital 'D'), not democrat. The fact at the end of the sentence needs citation. Thus: "On January 30, 2011, Rockland Community College held a ceremonial swearing-in of David Carlucci, Independent Democrat from New City, an alumnus of Rockland Community College (class of 2000) and youngest senator to be elected in New York history representing the New York Senate 38th district."[citation needed]

9/11 Commemoration and Remembrance Ceremony Line 4: "In 2012, The Quad outside of the Technology Center, will include a memorial garden." The garden has been installed. Thus: "A memorial garden was completed in 2012 in the Quad outside of the Technology Center."

Line 6: "...Trade Center supplied by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with the floor of the garden laid with bricks inscribed with personnel messages." The messages were personal, not personnel. Thus: "...Trade Center supplied by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with the floor of the garden laid with bricks inscribed with personal messages."

Campus 1973 -- Library. "The library's collection contains over 120,000 books,..." It now contains more than 125,000 books. Thus: "The library's collection contains more than 125,000 books,..." Source: RCC Course Catalog, 2012-2014, page 224.

Academics "Rockland Community College offers 30 associate's degrees and 12 one-year certificate programs.[5]" This is outdated. The college offers 40 associate's degrees and 11 one-year certificate programs. Thus: "Rockland Community College offers 40 associate's degrees and 11 one-year certificate programs." Source: Facts About Rockland Community College, RCC website (www.sunyrockland.edu).

International Students “Rockland Community College is ranked number one in the country among two-year institutions for sending students on international study programs.” This assertion needs a citation for verification.

CASS Program RCC no longer offers a CASS program. Thus this section should be removed.

PACT Program RCC no longer offers a PACT program. Thus this section should be removed.

Children's Programs Academy for Gifted and Talented Children RCC has discontinued this program. Thus this section should be removed.

Full-day preschool to the community "The Campus Fun & Learn, which runs from the first day after Labor Day until the last week of June, is a full-day or part-time preschool program open to the community for children between the ages of three and five." The program is for children between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years. Thus: "The Campus Fun & Learn, which runs from the first day after Labor Day until the last week of June, is a full-day or part-time preschool program open to the community for children between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years." Source: RCC website, Campus Fun and Learn Center, www.sunyrockland.edu

Second paragraph, line 1: "In 2009 The Theresa Morahan Simmons Center for Children and Families groundbreaking ceremony took place on July 27, 2008 and the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony took place on June 14, 2009." The words starting the sentence, "In 2009," are superfluous and can be removed.

Fourth paragraph, second bullet point: "Providing a support services to busy working parents..." The word "a" is unnecessary. Thus: ""Providing support services to busy working parents..."

Youth and young adult programs Liberty Partnership Program RCC has discontinued this program. Thus, this section should be removed.

Comprehensive Education and Family Resource Center RCC no longer offers this program. Thus, this section should be removed.

Notable faculty A name that should be added to this section is Elaine Padilla, Ph.D., Professor, Social Science. In 2013 she won the National Faculty Award from the Association of Community College Trustees. She was a Fulbright Scholar in both Japan and Korea and has won many state, regional and national awards during her 30-year-plus tenure at RCC. In 2009 she won the SUNY Distinguished Service Professorship, the highest ranking given by the State University of New York system, and in 1999 earned the National Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development. Source: Meet the Faculty page, RCC website (www.sunyrockland.edu). JamesGKempton (talk) 15:40, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Help with Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and The Art Institutes

Hello all, I'm looking for assistance resolving issues with the articles of three different colleges. All of the schools are owned by EDMC, for which I am a paid consultant. Due to my financial COI, I don't make edits to articles directly, so I am hoping editors here might be able to take a look at the requests and make changes where they see fit. I've outlined each of the issues below:

  • I've put forth the suggestion to rename or remove a Controversy section that has recently been added to the Brown Mackie College article, but haven't received a response.
  • A sentence regarding EDMC's legal issues has been added to the introduction of the The Art Institutes article. There's been ongoing discussion about the edit since February, but there's been no reply since May 12.
  • I've been working with editors on the Argosy University Talk page to clarify wording in the article's Legal issues section. Any additional thoughts on this would be helpful.

I've reached out to a few other editors as well, but I'd appreciate assistance any editors here can provide. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 22:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Network of for-profit educational institutions owned by Global University Systems

I'm trying to untangle the situation with these institutions and link their articles. GUS[4] owns several companies we have articles on, eg London School of Business and Finance (which lost all its UK partnerships although that isn't in the article[5]) the London College of Contemporary Arts (LCCA), Grenoble Graduate School of Business, St Patrick's College, London and probably others I haven't checked yet. St. Patrick's accreditation page[6] shows how these institutions reference each other without mentioning joint ownership. Maybe this isn't a problem, but I'm not convinced. Any help or comments would be useful. This is intereting[7] - a way that for-profit educational institutions, specifically this one, seem to be able to profit from UK subsidies. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 10:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

University of Waterloo Stratford Campus

Following the confirmation of a sockfarm at work, some help over at an article reads more like a page out of a University marketing material than an Encyclopaedia article would be welcome. LGA talkedits 21:51, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Universities At Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

If anyone here is at a loose end, wishing they could find a crappy article to lick into shape, then (especially if that editor happens to be able to read Dutch) I warmly recommend the awkwardly titled article HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. -- Hoary (talk) 00:20, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I had a wack at it. Still pretty bad though. -- Hoary (talk) 03:57, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Additional input on Monroe College

I don't have any spare time to edit articles right now so can someone else please take a gander at Monroe College? I've tried discussing with another editor the material that he or she is adding to the article but we can't seem to reach an agreement. I think that he or she works for the college given the language that he or she has used and the edits that he or she has made so I'm concerned about potential neutrality and conflict of interest issues. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 19:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Mississippi was omitted....

Mississippi was omitted.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_system 198.146.10.50 (talk) 20:31, 30 June 2014 (UTC)Valda

Template updates for new members of the Big Ten Conference

I am a bit confused by Rutgers' multiple campuses and need some advice at Talk:Big_Ten_Conference#Template_help regarding {{Big Ten Conference business school navbox}} and {{Big Ten Conference law school navbox}}.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 09:54, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Input needed

Please comment at Talk:Sichuan University School of Medicine#Rankings section. Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Requested move this project might be interested in

Or maybe not (lol) but here is a community college renaming move request: Talk:Gloucester County College#Requested move. Jrcla2 (talk) 18:45, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

University Sexual Assault Investigations in Lead

I've been inserting information (and created a category) for universities under investigation by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for Title IX violations. It's become a topic of debate as to whether this information should be placed in the lead, or if it should just be relegated to a controversies section. My feeling is that it is lead material: first, given that President Obama has both publicly named these institutions AND created a task force to address them; second, given the large amount of news coverage about university failures to address sexual violence; and third, because many of these places have a long history of turning a blind eye to sexual violence, such that their reputations are bound up in knowledge about their climate by both students and faculty. But I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Thebrycepeake (talk) 13:41, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Tagging User:ElKevbo and User:Esrever, who have made edits relating to this issue. See also the discussions at User talk:Thebrycepeake and User talk:Mr. Granger. —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 13:58, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not clear to me whether this information belongs in the articles at all, but I feel strongly that it does not belong in the leads. Per WP:MOS/LEAD, we should not give undue attention to less important controversies in the lead section, and this controversy is not major in the scope of these universities' history. —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 13:58, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Obviously inappropriate in the lead, probably inappropriate in most articles, and the category seems to reflect a lack of world wide perspective. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:04, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Assuming it's otherwise in good shape (e.g., neutral, balanced, due weight) I think it's reasonable information to include. It is a topic that has raised significant national attention at all levels and there are some particular institutions that have garnered particular interest in the media and legislatures.
For most institutions, I imagine that the best approach would be to simply include a generic line indicating that this institution is one of at least 67 institutions under investigation and then to include a link to an article that discusses this specific issue (which has certainly generated enough material to warrant its own article!). Some institutions would warrant additional discussion with material specific to the institution.
However, I don't think that this material rises to the level of inclusion in the lead of any article as it's not a defining characteristic of any institution. I'm certainly open to arguments that this is an issue that is essential for readers to know about if they're to understand one or more specific institutions but the argument has to be made. And for anyone who wants to have that discussion, please don't think that we should include this information in the lead just to balance out the positive POV of many college and university articles; I sympathize with that viewpoint and acknowledge that problem but this is not how it's solved. ElKevbo (talk) 16:21, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
I tend to agree with User:ElKevbo on this. I think it might warrant inclusion in some articles, but that it is not material for the lead. As I noted in comments on my own talk page, I think it's not lead material precisely because it is so widespread. If it were one institution that had received significant national coverage over a period of years, then yes, that's a lead-worthy point. But it's a national problem that has only recently come to the attention of the media and the public. To put it in the lead seems to give it undue weight. Esrever (klaT) 17:01, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Also tending to agree with User: ElKevbo now, that it is not appropriate for the lead for some places. However, if you look at schools like UNH and Dartmouth (listening to NPR right now where they are being discussed), this is part of a longer institutional history that goes back to the early 1980's (itself a crucial moment in the growth of these institutions and all of US higher education). Thebrycepeake (talk) 17:48, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Do you have a list of the specific institutions that you think should mention this information in the lead? I'm not proposing we discuss each specific case here but it would be helpful to have a centralized list of the institutions especially if it would be better to hold separate discussions for each of them (here would be fine but we'd need to drop a line in the articles' Talk pages to let other editors know that we're discussing the article here).
It's also worth noting that it's going to be an uphill battle to argue for inclusion of material that is shockingly negative in the lead of any of these articles. I'm not saying that it's inappropriate or that I will be personally opposed but it's easy to imagine that many people such as alumni and current administrators and students may be adamantly opposed to such information being prominently included in the lead of an article about "their" institution. ElKevbo (talk) 18:08, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't. I was just speculating that I could conceive that there might be such institutions. Esrever (klaT) 05:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Here is a list of schools with very long histories of campus sexual violence, off the top of my head: UNC, Yale, Dartmouth, UNH, Harvard, Princeton, UVA. I'll work on digging up sources before I do any edits to their leads, though. Please feel free to add to the lists. Thebrycepeake (talk) 16:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
  • If properly sourced and properly written, it might be appropriate for the body of the article, or even possibly a sub-section, but I don't think the mere instance of an investigation is warranted in the lead. First, an investigation is just an investigation, it doesn't necessarily mean that the school was in violation. Second, unless the investigation results in something substantial, discussing it in the lead is WP:UNDUE. Third, there are also WP:RECENTISM concerns, since I'm sure there have been many investigations over the years, but these would be highlighted just because they're currently in progress. In other words, what El Kevbo said.--GrapedApe (talk) 03:31, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The other end of the scale

I'm actually more concerned about the situation at the other end of the scale. Frostburg State University simply had the Category: Schools Under Investigation for Title IX Violations added. I'm *very* hesitant to have categories added that don't reflect any information or references in the article.Naraht (talk) 18:53, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry Naraht, I will make sure the info gets put in today - I did tags this morning, and was planning on doing info this afternoon. Thebrycepeake (talk) 19:18, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanx, I still have concerns on a grander scale but that is a *very* different issue, Does this investigation currently have an article?

I think the investigation should have an article, and I don't think there should be a "controversies" section unless real serious controversies take place - this is just fact, this stuff has happened, it's happening, and well, it should be mentioned if there are multiple reliable secondary sources. I don't necessary think it needs to be in the lead, but, perhaps in history sections or sections about the institutions today. SarahStierch (talk) 17:00, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I've noted elsewhere that a "Controversies" section shouldn't be created just as a place for this material unless the editor is willing to rework the article in such a way that other controversies affecting the school (most will have had a few others) are suitably consolidated there as well. I think in most cases, a sentence or two about these (breaking) issues can be added, perhaps as Missvain suggests, into the History section or elsewhere. JohnInDC (talk) 17:08, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the investigation certainly needs a page, and maybe that's where we should be starting from. Regarding the articles, perhaps what we're talking about is the absence of any information on most pages about the scandals that gave way to their Title IX investigations - rarely do these schools just show up as under investigation. Given that, I think folks are right, that maybe the history section is the best place, using Occidental College as a template? Thebrycepeake (talk) 17:42, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Folks here might be interested in the current conversation to delete Category: Schools Under Investigation for Title IX Violations. Please go weigh in on the debate! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebrycepeake (talk • contribs) 03:24, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Standardizing College presidents templates

A small matter, but can an admin help me with changing Template:Louisiana College Presidents to Template:Louisiana College presidents? All the other templates show small case for presidents, so I thought I would make it consistent.........Pvmoutside (talk) 20:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Done.....Thank-you!....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:24, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Bank Street

I am looking for the foundational theories upon which Bank Street Children's school practices are based. Does anyone have that information? 98.155.35.204 (talk) 19:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)May98.155.35.204 (talk) 19:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Style discussion underway

FYI
 – MOS discussion within the scope of this project

A discussion about the style of the academic course names is underway at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Titles#Names of academic courses. Ibadibam (talk) 23:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Rutgers University, Rutgers New Brunswick, Rutgers Camden, Rutgers Newark

Any Rutgers experts out there. I'm in a bit of an edit war with another editor. We are fighting over which templates to use at the bottom of each page. He insists on using the Rutgers template for all pages. I'd like to use the template for each campus where appropriate, since there are specific topics listed for each campus. Any thoughts? I suppose I can make a proposal if that would help things and there is enough interest.....Pvmoutside (talk) 03:00, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Your edits go against nearly a decade of usage on Wikipedia, and guidelines from WikiProject Rutgers that have been around nearly as long. -Kai445 (talk) 03:36, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
I would be surprised if we really needed more than one template for one university. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:31, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
So the problem is Rutgers is a hybrid university. Each campus has a different chancellor, different sports teams, different conferences. Camden and Newark are Division III, New Brunswick is division I......They are even broken down on the Rutgers web site...Pvmoutside (talk) 12:38, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
There are many universities with a setup similar to Rutgers, Penn State is one of them. The fact they are all part of the same university system needs to be reflected in the unifying template. If there are a significant amount of articles related to the smaller campuses, then an additional template could be included or those articles worked into the existing Rutgers template. Looking at the template, it could use some reorganization and trimming. Athletics doesn't appear to be on the template at all and many of the links just go to the article on the specific campus. Really, though, the whole organization of the Rutgers-related articles is very confusing. It would seem the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Rutgers University" is Rutgers–New Brunswick. Rutgers-New Brunswick is the school that uses "Rutgers" as their team name, so it would make sense that Rutgers University redirect there and the current Rutgers University page be renamed something else like Rutgers University System or similar and trimmed down since most of the history of Rutgers is about the original New Brunswick campus. A merge is also a possibility given the large amount of overlap. Again, Pennsylvania State University is a good example of that. It is about the main University Park campus, but includes the info (enrollment, staff, etc.) about the other campuses with links to those articles. I get that within the Rutgers system they don't want it to be called the "main campus" or something like that, but that's the reality. It's the original campus, athletic teams are known simply as "Rutgers", and it is referred to in the media as "Rutgers" while Camden and Newark usually have the qualifier. It's not about equal treatment, it's about the most common usage. --JonRidinger (talk) 13:56, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

The campuses are centrally administered. Degrees are awarded "Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey" and are not campus-specific. Professors are not campus-specific, they are employees of Rutgers, not (Rutgers-Campus), and in some schools faculty teach on multiple campuses. Further, some schools span campuses (Rutgers Business School, on Newark and New Brunswick) and soon to be the unified Rutgers School of Law (starting with the next admitting class, spanning Camden and Newark). Student services span all campuses (RUID #/Student ID, NetID/CAS, cross-honored parking, Rutgers Campus Buses on both NB and Newark, etc.). The university as a whole was admitted to the AAU, not a specific campus. There is single color, motto, fight song, and standardized logotype and imagery across all campuses. Three Campuses, One University. -Kai445 (talk) 14:12, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

It appears an agreement was reached, with three editors now in favor of a collapsible template. -Kai445 (talk) 14:25, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
Again, nothing unusual. My own alma mater Kent State University has a similar setup in that the regional campuses are centrally administered and students are all considered as "Kent State University" students and degrees are never campus specific, even those degrees only offered at a regional. Even so, the regional campuses have articles about them while "Kent State University" mainly focuses on the Kent campus. Same for Penn State. University of Nebraska is another example, which redirects to University of Nebraska–Lincoln. My point is that when people look for "Rutgers" they're most likely looking for Rutgers-New Brunswick since it is the campus that refers to itself, particularly in the highly visible realm of college athletics, as "Rutgers". Camden and Newark both compete in Division III and use the campus names in their team name. University style guides are understandable, but not the final say. The setup at Rutgers is not unique. --JonRidinger (talk) 16:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
I had fun at the Rutgers-Penn State game the other week, but I'd like to think we're more than just our athletic teams :), and I don't think that the structure of athletic teams should dictate how the main article is written. I know professors that literally teach in New Brunswick one portion of the day, and then commute to the Newark to teach class the same day (and visa-versa), I'd be impressed if other schools functioned the same way... -Kai445 (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

As for template-related discussion, it is taking place here: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2014_September_21#Template:Rutgers_New_Brunswick -Kai445 (talk) 17:16, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

  • Comment I taught at Rutgers for a number of years, and also attended their library school. Their system at the time was a confusing mixture of units organized ad hoc on different and conflicting principles, and to the extent I have kept up with matters, it has since gotten successively more confusing--especially with the medical schools. I think the only possible way to clarify it is an article for the system as a whole and then articles for the different campuses and major units. (I point out that 40 or 50 years ago the Camden and Newark campuses were except for their law schools of very subordinate importance and prestige, but that at least Newark is reaching a reasonable degree of self-sufficiency). (I suggest also that something similar is the best approach to other complex systems , especially those with substantial histories.) DGG ( talk ) 19:20, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Amity University

A merger has been proposed at Talk:Amity University RfC: Merger proposal, should Amity Law School to be merged with Amity University?, interested editors are requested to give their feedback. Thank you! — CutestPenguinHangout 17:01, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Editing Infoboxes

Hello everyone - as some of you have seen, I've been working on information regarding campus sexual violence. In my research for other articles, I've found that many of the universities that are part of the recent OCR list have been found in violation (not just investigation) a number of times. I was wondering how people felt about editing the college/uni infobox template to include something along the lines of "Found in violation of Title IX" (with some more graceful wording, of course). This information is becoming quite central to the history of higher education in the United States, and so I think that should be reflected in our information. TYVM for your input Thebrycepeake (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Oppose - Are we also going to add infobox parameters for the (a) the number of civil lawsuits filed against the university, (2) the federally-guaranteed student loan default rate of alumni, (3) number of building and health code violations, (4) the number of sexual harassment lawsuits filed against faculty and staff, or (5) the percentage of male, female and transgendered faculty? The possibilities are endless . . . . Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:39, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose inclusion in the university infobox. The infobox should be limited to essential, defining characteristics of the subject. This is interesting and important information that should be included in the article but it doesn't rise to the level of inclusion in the infobox. (In case anyone is wondering or going to raise an objection, I do oppose the inclusion of some of the information that is already prevalent in the infobox. It would certainly be different if it were solely up to me!) ElKevbo (talk) 19:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Like ElKevbo, I think the infobox should be limited to defining characteristics of the subject. —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 20:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In addition to the arguments above, this would be a purely US-centric addition which makes no sense for the great majority of universities. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 20:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Earnest Question I see this "not defining characteristic of the subject" used over and over again, and I'm still trying to figure what this means -- defining to who? At what point does something come into definition? If the short history of Title IX, places like University of Florida have been found in violation of federal regulations (not just accused) FOUR TIMES. That's almost once every 10 years! What is the point at which something becomes defining, and how do we locate that point?Thebrycepeake (talk) 15:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
That's a good question and I don't have a short, easy answer at the tip of my tongue. Thinking out loud, I'd imagine that such an answer might say something about the core mission of the institution and its lasting impact. A more concrete answer that is easily defended using Wikipedia's core principles, particularly WP:OR and WP:RS, is that the infobox should contain the information that other reliable sources commonly cite as being important and common characteristics shared by most colleges and universities e.g., what information do people and organizations like the U.S. Department of Education, publishers of popular rankings, well-respected scholars, and the institutions themselves typically share as essential information that defines and distinguishes institutions? If I were starting this infobox from scratch, that is probably where I'd start.
As I've said to you before, I think you're much better off first writing a good article about this topic and then linking each institution to that article as appropriate. A few institutions will have enough history with this topic to warrant a brief (or maybe even long) discussion in their main article but most will probably only warrant a mention with a link to the main article about the topic and its history and present developments. ElKevbo (talk) 16:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Your advice last time was well taken, ElKevbo - see U.S. Department of Education Releases List of Higher Education Institutions with Open Title IX Sexual Violence Investigations and New Campus Anti-Rape Movement, and edits at Campus rape. In the process, though, I'm discovering that Title IX violations (and sexual assault in general) have been part of many US college and universities histories in the 20th and 21st century (and not simply after the 1960's as some articles suggest). This is not original research, but simply going through decades and decades of new reports, government documents, etc. while writing the previous articles.
That brings me to where I am now: I agree with Jonathan A Jones that it is not a global issue, and probably doesn't belong in the infobox, but I think it is a defining enough characteristic to go in the leads of many (though probably not all as you mention above) US colleges and Universities. News articles in relation to sports and the like have been citing issues of sexual violence as "defining" since long before the public OCR lists, with plenty of cites to be made to make this case. I felt like WP:IAR might start to apply here, but apparently (beyond categories) there is no WP rule on "defining"... Thebrycepeake (talk) 16:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Don't you think there's a difference with being subject to a Title IX investigation and being subject to federal sanctions under title IX? In other words, shouldn't there be a higher bar for being "defining" than just being investigated, but rather if that investigation resulted in something?--GrapedApe (talk) 03:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Sure GrapedApe - I'm not saying that the folks under investigation should just be added to the lede (although I may think so, I can understand the resistance to it). What I'm talking about are schools found OUT OF COMPLIANCE by the OCR (not just accused of it), especially because most of the universities on the list released by OCR have been previously under investigation and/or found in noncompliance. As for federal sanctions, no one has ever been sanctioned, which pulls all federal aid and is called the "nuclear option," because it does more damage to students and faculty than it does the administrators who facilitate non-compliance. see here for a simple version of the debate on sanction. What do you think? Thebrycepeake (talk) 16:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Question: Lists of people vs. lists of alumni

I have a question regarding the proper naming of lists of university people, specifically List of University of Florida people. Unlike many lists of university people, this list includes only notable alumni (i.e., notable persons who attended the university, regardless of whether they graduated or not) of the University of Florida. It does not include presidents of the university (separate list), non-alumni university administrators and faculty (separate list), or non-alumni university sports coaches (separate lists). Is it appropriate per WP:Universities' article naming conventions to rename this article "List of University of Florida alumni"? I ask project members to share their opinions on point. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 08:47, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Normally we make one list, if there are a small number, and divide at some point, usually between 30 and 50. Florida's list is very large in several of the groups, so it is appropriately divided After the division, it should read ...people ...faculty etc. I think someone just forgot to change the name. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, DGG. Large lists of faculty, alumni, and student-athletes naturally proceed from being one of the 5 to 10 largest universities in North America, with 300,000+ living alumni, a strong research faculty, a strong college sports program -- and a strong WikiProject! I have moved the main alumni article to "List of University of Florida alumni," since it is now an alumni-only list, with separate lists for presidents, faculty and administrators, and various sports, and I have include "see also" links to the other University of Florida-related lists. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

List nominated for deletion

Folks here might be interested in the recent nomination of List of American higher education institutions with open Title IX sexual violence investigations for deletion for lacking notability, diversity, and WP:RECENTISM. Please join the conversation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebrycepeake (talk • contribs) 18:12, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Featured Article candidacy for Oxford College of Emory University

Hello everyone, I have nominated Oxford College of Emory University for featured article status, and I would like to ask project members to drop by and leave some comments if they have time. You can find the nomination here. Thanks in advance! --haha169 (talk) 19:46, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Carnegie Classifications moved to Indiana University

Can someone please edit Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to note that the classifications have been moved from Carnegie to the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University? I have several close connections with that research center so I'm loathe to make the edits myself. The official announcement from Carnegie is here and it has been covered by the typical higher ed news outlets (e.g., Inside Higher Ed). It might also be worth mentioning that (a) Lumina is providing significant funding to help make this move and (b) the voluntary community engagement classification is remaining with Carnegie.

This move also affects the classifications website so we now have a lot of broken links in U.S. college and university articles. It looks like Carnegie has taken down virtually their entire classifications website and left only some text and a few links, including a link to an Excel file with the current classifications for every institution included in the classification. The current webpage indicates that IU will have a new webpage up in January so it's probably best to wait until then before worrying about changing or updating links. This is stable information that won't change quickly or often so we're fine with some outdated links, at least for a little while. ElKevbo (talk) 18:44, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion: Replace QS rankings with the new US News Global Rankings within ranking tables

It is well known that QS is the least reliable global ranking. It gives over half weight to the so called subjective "reputation", and it strongly favors UK schools. On the other hand, the new US News Global ranking seems better (although it also uses some reputation survey data). So my suggestion is: Replace the QS rankings with the new US News Global Rankings in the ranking tables. 73.169.247.206 (talk) 05:39, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Notability for colleges?

Hey, I've got a quick question: if a college is private but awards accredited degrees, does it have notability? I've been told that colleges only have to give out accredited degrees to be considered notable but I'm not sure if that is only for public/non-profit schools or if it includes private/for-profit schools as well. I'm currently working on a clean version of the article for Met Film School, which is wildly promotional in tone but has some assertion of notability. I've got it up for G11 because the article is absolutely and positively promotional beyond the point where it could be salvaged in that incarnation. I tried re-writing but realized that I was going to have to re-write it from scratch- it's that bad. I'm slightly worried that private schools don't qualify for the whole degree=notability thing, so I don't want to waste time creating a userspace entry if the school's private status disqualifies it. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:12, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Academia?

Please see here: Talk:Academia#WikiProject Academia?. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 02:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC asking if post docs are alumni

This RfC asks if post docs should be considered alumni and may be of interest to editors here. ElKevbo (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit warring at University at Buffalo and State University of New York over flagship designation

Can a neutral part please take a look at University at Buffalo and State University of New York? One or more editors has been edit warring and using sock puppets to edit those articles and their associated Talk pages. I have already made numerous edits to the articles and Talk pages and I'm reluctant to revert the articles back to my preferred version fearing that it might be construed as edit warring or taking advantage of a blocked user's inability to edit. I think that I've laid out my case pretty convincingly at Talk:State University of New York but I will let you decide that for yourself and take the appropriate action(s) (or not). Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 03:32, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Your case is indeed convincing, and I see it has now moved on several stages, so your question here is likely to be moot. But I have put back the proper version of State University of New York for you. Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 08:52, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! This turned out to be a conflict with an editor who was using over a dozen sockpuppets; those sockpuppets have since been blocked and it seems to have been very quiet since then. ElKevbo (talk) 17:44, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Anyone willing to help clean up and correct a New Zealand University entry?

The entry for University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ, has a section on controversies merged into a section originally on personnel that includes emotive, controversial claims and part-truths intertwined with well referenced facts. I would much prefer not to edit this because of my relationship to the university, but the page badly needs editing to return it to a more standard university wikipedia format and to revert it to facts. Anarchia (talk) 22:04, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Remove Public Ivy from college and university article leads?

I've opened a discussion here proposing that "public ivy" be removed from the lead of college and university articles. Please contribute your thoughts whether they be on the merits of the proposal or suggestions on procedures and logistics e.g., does this require an RfC or discussion on each individual article's Talk page? ElKevbo (talk) 16:30, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I have opened an RfC to seek additional input on this topic. ElKevbo (talk) 20:58, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Should we use "Faculty" or "Academics" in category names?

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 21#Category:Faculty of the University of Oxford. One proposal is to merge Category:Faculty of the University of Oxford into Category:Academics of the University of Oxford; there is a counter-proposal to merge them the other way round. If you have views on whether the category should be called "Academics" or "Faculty", then please join in. There are also related proposals to change Category:Academics by university in Europe to Category:Faculty by university or college in Europe and to change Category:Academics by university in the United Kingdom to be Category:Faculty by university or college in the United Kingdom. Views welcome on how best to deal with all this. BencherliteTalk 18:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Open university

FYI, Open university was a redirect to a specific university, until I blanked it. I don't know how else to make it known that this is an article sorely missing at Wikipedia. 14:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I undid your deletion; it's a relevant and useful redirect to have in place and it should definitely remain there until and unless a new article can take its place.
On the topic of "open university" (in the generic sense), the relevant disambiguation page with a few specific, relevant links is at Open universities. Whether Open university should redirect to Open University or Open universities is a matter of debate. ElKevbo (talk) 15:03, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Alumni associations

I notice the new article Allahabad University Alumni Association. It's a mess, and it says very little. But for now let's put aside the failings that are specific to it. I don't say it's impossible for an alumni association to be noteworthy in the normal sense of the word (other than to its members), but I have trouble imagining this. Meanwhile I can imagine WP-style notability via, say, stupidity: e.g. multiple newspaper reports on an association's defense of hazing, sexism or whatever. My guesses aside, do we actually have any articles on alumni associations? -- Hoary (talk) 13:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Assistance requested

I happened to notice that user Kousar Parveen has been rewriting some articles about colleges in Pakistan, and they could probably use someone more familiar with how we cover colleges and universities to look them over for tone and style and to generally work with the user to kindly teach him stuff like "don't put your name at the top of articles". Thanks. Anomie⚔ 16:50, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Category merger discussion - Rawlinsonian Professors of Anglo-Saxon / Rawlinson and Bosworth Professors of Anglo-Saxon

In 1916, the Oxford University position of Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon was renamed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. We have one article (the former name redirecting to the new) but two categories for the pre- and post-1916 professors. Should they be merged or kept as they are? See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 26#Category:Rawlinsonian Professors of Anglo-Saxon - all contributions welcome. BencherliteTalk 01:09, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Current move request could benefit from more input

Talk:University_of_British_Columbia_Faculty_of_Law#Requested_move_23_January_2015 Ronhjones  (Talk) 20:52, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Request for input on merging Art Institutes locations

Wikipedia currently has 20+ articles on individual The Art Institutes locations. I have proposed merging/redirecting these articles at Talk:The Art Institutes#Merging various locations revisited, and would appreciate any feedback on the proposal from WikiProject Universities contributors.Dialectric (talk) 09:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

How to handle African American firsts biographies, and history of desegregation in universities ?

As a followup to Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/African Americans in STEM, I am having my first discussion at Talk:Donald R. Brown regarding biographies about African American firsts in desegregating professional schools. I am not an expert on this subject. Can some more experienced people weigh in on this? --Djembayz (talk) 05:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Templates for Deletion: Atlantic Coast Conference business schools, etc.

There are three separate TfD discussions pending in which twenty-five (25) navboxes regarding constituent academic colleges and student media, as categorized by the athletic conference membership of the parent universities, have been nominated for deletion. As these are subjects in which members of WikiProject Universities might be expected to have an interest and background knowledge, you are invited to comment on these discussions at:

Thank you for your time and attention. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Article about Duisenberg School of Finance

Dear all, I have come across this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duisenberg_School_of_Finance and made several structural changes. Although I still believe that the article could be significantly improved. Therefore, I ask for help from fellow wikipedians to assist with editing. Please help expand the content, realign the references and the accuracy of the article. Thank you in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verbal.noun (talk • contribs) 16:55, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Can a few more folks take a look at the edit history of Sweet Briar College‎ and pop into Talk:Sweet Briar College‎? The college recently announced that it will be closing this summer. The announcement was sudden and very unexpected so its making quite a stir in many different circles, including among students, faculty, and alumni. Higher education scholars and pundits are getting into the fray, too, as they try to read the tea leaves to see what this means for other colleges and universities especially those that share similarities with Sweet Briar e.g., single-sex, rural, small.

We're running into some problems - nasty sniping in Talk, edit wars, accusations of POV, etc. - documenting some of the history of this institution especially how some people have perceived it and some possible causes for its decision to close. Neutral views from uninvolved editors would be greatly appreciated! ElKevbo (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to Participate in a WikiProject Study

Hello Wikipedians,


We’d like to invite you to participate in a study that aims to explore how WikiProject members coordinate activities of distributed group members to complete project goals. We are specifically seeking to talk to people who have been active in at least one WikiProject in their time in Wikipedia. Compensation will be provided to each participant in the form of a $10 Amazon gift card.


The purpose of this study is to better understanding the coordination practices of Wikipedians active within WikiProjects, and to explore the potential for tool-mediated coordination to improve those practices. Interviews will be semi-structured, and should last between 45-60 minutes. If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment for the online chat session. During the appointment you will be asked some basic questions about your experience interacting in WikiProjects, how that process has worked for you in the past and what ideas you might have to improve the future.


You must be over 18 years old, speak English, and you must currently be or have been at one time an active member of a WikiProject. The interview can be conducted over an audio chatting channel such as Skype or Google Hangouts, or via an instant messaging client. If you have questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Michael Gilbert at (206) 354-3741 or by email at mdg@uw.edu.


We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email.


The link to the relevant research page is m:Research:Means_and_methods_of_coordination_in_WikiProjects


173.250.179.79 (talk) 04:04, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

College article notability discussion

I just wanted to mention this discussion taking place about whether 60 or so articles on Korean colleges should be deleted for lack of notability. I'm against these proposed deletions based on the manner in which they were nominated, though I agree that some of the schools may not be notable enough to be included on Wikipedia. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of members of this wikiproject. Rystheguy (talk) 13:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

How do I add the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy

I would like to add information about the University of Hawaii Hilo - the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy and need assistance. I added my information and was told that I couldn't add it because I was an employee. I am very new to Wikipedia and don't know all the rules. Lauralibal (talk) 03:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Lauralibal: First you should make sure you can find significant coverage of the college in multiple, independent, reliable sources to confirm the notability of the subject apart from the parent university per WP:GNG. For our purposes, that means reliable sources that are unaffiliated with the college or university per WP:RS. Ping me when you've done your homework, and I'll help you get started -- creating an article is easy. Not getting it deleted requires a little bit of homework. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:37, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Group. Please I'm new at this and I have a quick question. Please am I able to change the "free_label" on the Template:Infobox university/doc to "governing_board"? Is this allowed? If so how do I do it? Thank you --Bola.coker (talk) 17:23, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Editing Template:Infobox university/doc

Hello Group Please I am new to Wikipedia and just trying to get the hang of it. I have a quick question, please am I able to change the "free_label" on the Template:Infobox university/doc to "governing_board"? Is this allowed? If so how do I do it? If not what is the purpose of "free_lable" and what is its use? My goal is to be able to add "governing board" to the Infobox of a new article I'm writing but it's not currently available as one of the Data feilds. Thank You!! --Bola.coker (talk) 19:00, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

  • @Bola.coker: You may insert the optional "free" parameters into the infobox template on the actual article page, e.g., the "free_label = Governing board" and "free = Faculty Senate," or whatever label you choose together with the actual name of the board/panel/governing body. That is the purpose of the optional "free" parameters. If you link to the article you are building, I will be happy to assist. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:09, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


History of Michigan State University FAR

I have nominated History of Michigan State University for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) to be moved to Columbia University performance art controversy. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:21, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Infobox US university ranking / USNWR_NU

To whom it may concern: I like your box. :D

For schools designated "RNP" and "Tier 2" by USNWR_NU, which is more informative in the box? I've seen both, more consistency would be nice, and consistency would seem to trump the somewhat tenuous concept of local consensus in this case. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:08, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not seeking an approval to override an explicit local consensus, but I have no qualms about editing for consistency in this field in articles where no explicit consensus is evident. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

University of Canterbury

I wonder if I could ask colleagues' help? The page for University of Canterbury (my workplace) has been hijacked for a number of years by some staff who were badly bruised by a restructuring. The university's own communications people have responded by putting up their PR-speak material - though some of that material has gone again. The page is currently locked because of a blocked user's attempts to add to the chaos. I have conflicts of interest as was involved in the restructuring so I wonder if the universities project would be willing to take on the page as a task? As the talk page illustrates, the page has non-neutral info, recentism, poor citation and other related problems. One suggest I have is cutting the section 'Personnel...' and making a new page on the restructuring and dispute so that at least the main page is cleaner. Thanks! 111.69.144.158 (talk) 22:00, 31 May 2015 (UTC)


Mattress Performance

There is a discussion at the BLP noticeboard which may be relevant to this wikiproject. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

TfD: SEC law schools navbox nominated for deletion

WikiProject University members, here is a navbox within the scope of our project that I have nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 June 12#Template:Southeastern Conference Law Schools. Given project members' past interest in related navbox subjects, I thought you would want to know, and we invite your participation in the TfD discussion. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:53, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy Expansion

Hello! Would anyone be willing to help me expand the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy? I figured there might be some folks interested in this page. I'm pretty new here and could use some help. Since it's an underdeveloped page I was thinking we could add some more content sections. Since I work at Batten as an intern, there might be some COI issues which is also why I'm asking for help, I'm wholeheartedly interested in writing an unbiased piece and could use some cooperation to ensure that happens.

Here's some articles I pulled together from fairly reliable sources on possible tidbits of info, etc.

Overview

Quote for Batten’s vision for the school

Faculty/Staff

Faculty (etc.) with Wikipedia pages

Degrees

Other

http://internsdc.com/internship-opportunities/special-interview-kellie-sauls-frank-batten-school-leadership-public-policy/

Virginia Policy Review

I also have easy access to the University of Virginia's library system if including any information book or special resources here is applicable.--Wannesa (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC - Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)

There's currently an open RfC on a topic that may be of interest to readers of this wikiproject.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 03:34, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Country-specific Task Forces?

How do you guys feel about accommodating task forces for individual countries at WikiProject Universities? From what I'm reading at WP:TASKFORCE, technically it'd only require creating a project sub-page (populated using {{Task force}}) and adding "|tf 2=" in the {{WikiProject_Universities}} banner source code. Thanks for your thoughts. Fgnievinski (talk) 05:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

University of Gibraltar

Hi there. This is a new university that will open later this year. The article is currently a stub but there's a lot of information that could already be used to expand it such as its faculties, institutes and courses available. I've noticed there have recently been some unwitting conflict of interest issues with certain editors who seem to have a connection with said university and have now been blocked. I've not got any connection with the uni myself but being from Gibraltar, I'd rather not edit the article until the dust has settled. So my question is, is there anybody here willing to expand this article a little and give it some body? Many thanks, --Gibmetal 77talk 2 me 15:08, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I would leave it as it is until it opens. The press interest at that time will give us lots of sources. --Bduke (Discussion) 23:27, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Anyone should feel free to expand the article with whatever reliable sources are out there. Living in Gibraltar is certainly not a conflict of interest that should stop anyone from editing the article. Toohool (talk) 07:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Category:Burials at Wren Chapel (College of William & Mary)

Category:Burials at Wren Chapel (College of William & Mary), which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Jrcla2 (talk) 04:10, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

University of London Union shut down

Hey all, the University of London Union was abolished a year ago, but there still seem to be a lot of out of date articles out there referring to it as if it still exists. Would be greatful for some help checking and updating the articles that mention it. Bosstopher (talk) 19:03, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Georgetown University Task Force Proposal

I am proposing the creation of a Georgetown University task force. The main article of the task force, Georgetown University, has attained featured article status, indicating that there is a a fairly substantial degree of dedication of editors to expanding and improving Georgetown University articles. Additionally, there is a a Georgetown University template that includes many of the articles associated with Georgetown.

The work to be done includes greatly expanding many of those non-main articles that are either stubs or outdated. Many articles can also be created on notable matters and events. I am also creating a proposal on WikiProject/Task Forces. Please indicate potential interest in joining this proposed task force. Ergo Sum (talk) 20:33, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

(U.S.) National Student Clearinghouse research

Recently, the National Student Clearinghouse in the U.S. has been doing some excellent research into college enrollment, transfer, and graduation. It's very well-done work and it's work that only they can do since they're the only ones with a nearly complete data set for most college students in the U.S. (due to our mix of public and private institutions and the U.S. government's ban on a federal government student record system). But I haven't seen much or any of this work incorporated into Wikipedia articles. So if you have a few minutes, check out some of their work, double-check for yourself that it's reliable and well-known (the higher ed media routinely report on this work so searching Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education will definitely provide you with hits), and help figure out if some of this information should be incorporated into some of our articles. ElKevbo (talk) 17:00, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Category:Coahoma Tigers football players

Category:Coahoma Tigers football players, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for dual upmerging. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.RevelationDirect (talk) 02:30, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Category:Rectors of Ghent University

Category:Rectors of Ghent University, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for dual upmerging. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.RevelationDirect (talk) 02:32, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs

Hi WikiProject Universities editors, What is the best way to get the following messages removed from my organization's page? - A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (August 2012) - This article may contain improper references to self-published sources. (August 2012) I have added more outside references but that didn't get the "self-published sources" warning removed. And I don't want to change too much more give the first warning. The page was created before I started in the job and I think a lot of students on campus added to it so I wonder if that's how the first warning appeared. Thanks for any help you can provide! -Erin--Leland524 (talk) 14:13, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Admission

some place has got no accommudation compass hw can it be for some one who is committed to study in unity unversty or if soeme never afford the pay as well — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gatlek Dol (talk • contribs) 13:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Add "Annual Tuition" field to Template:Infobox law school

A discussion is taking place about whether to add an "Annual Tuition" field to {{Infobox law school}}. This page within the scope of this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:07, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Individual colleges of Gautam Buddha University

The article guideline on "Faculties and academic colleges" confirms my belief that each of

says very little that is encyclopedic, seems unlikely to do so, and should be turned into a redirect to Gautam Buddha University -- itself a pretty crappy article; randomly selected sample:

Department of Architecture & Regional Planning has been conceptualized with post graduation programme in Urban and Regional Planning along with integrated dual degree programme in B. Arch & M. Planning to inculcate and promote the integrated & multi-disciplinary studies for design of built environment and develop cross cutting interface of technology in the field of design and development.

and one that requires radical trimming.

I'd simply go ahead and do this myself, but for the conviction that the creator(s) of the articles would be vocally (and/or revertingly) unhappy. Far better to get a consensus for this beforehand.

Although, of course, you may wish to point out how I am wrong and each school of this university does after all merit its own (mostly self-referenced) article.

Pinging User:Vaibhav Kadiyan (whose own user page redirects surprisingly) as multiple creator, and User:Zarghun11 as the approving reviewer of two of these articles. -- Hoary (talk) 13:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I was thinking of redirecting the one that I came across but then saw that the logo linked to multiple such articles and therefore brought it to you(Hoary). The university itself isn't that big, with a student population not greater than an individual IIT, and it's not like Jawaharlal Nehru University or Delhi University whose individual departments are sometimes notable enough. —SpacemanSpiff 04:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you were most welcome to do this. And I'd have swiftly turned them into redirects myself, if it weren't for my guess that their creator would be unhappy about this, leading to a waste of more time than if I'd brought up the matter here. ¶ I've just now deleted two of the pages as copyright violations. -- Hoary (talk) 05:06, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Redirected the remainder. —SpacemanSpiff 03:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Category:Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Category:Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and other 1 article University categories, which are within the scope of this WikiProject, have been nominated for deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 23:30, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

What Wikipedia is not#Is it promotional in archaeological articles to mention the university leading an excavation?. Doug Weller (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Please see What Wikipedia is not#Is it promotional in archaeological articles to mention the university leading an excavation?. Doug Weller (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Two months ago, an editor suggested that HBCU Closure Crisis be merged into Historically black colleges and universities. There doesn't appear to have been any discussion but another editor has unilaterally decided that the merge shouldn't happen not by posting in Talk but by simply removing the merge template. As you can see on our colleague's User Talk page, I've had several encounters with this editor so he or she won't react well if I participate in the edit war that he or she has already begun. Can someone else please drop in and (a) restore the merge template and (b) offer an opinion in Talk? The (currently deleted) template has finally begun to generate good discussion and the proposed merge shouldn't be vetoed by one editor who is preventing everyone else from even knowing that a discussion is underway. ElKevbo (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

American College of Commerce and Technology (ACCT)

The American College of Commerce and Technology (ACCT) is currently listed as an unaccredited university, but ACCT received national accreditation in April, 2015 by the Accrediting Council for Independent Schools and Colleges (ACICS). Allaich (talk) 15:34, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Nova Southeastern University

If anyone's looking for a project, Nova Southeastern University is in need of some major love to clean up a large amount of promotional content. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Should the members of the Student Council be listed by name?

There is a discussion at Talk:V. G. Vaze College about whether it is appropriate to list the 20 members of the Student Council. Wikipedia:College and university article guidelines doesn't seem to explicitly mention this question, perhaps because the answer is obvious - but views of editors of this article differ. Comments from experts in writing about universities would be welcome. PamD 22:10, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Open edit request

There is an open edit request at Talk:List of unaccredited institutions of higher education. I added my opinion but it's a sensitive enough issue that 2 or 3 sets of eyes ("2 out of 3 editors in agreement") should be involved before the request is honored or declined. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:18, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Advice on article title and structure

I came across the article Kobe Institute of Computing. As seen from the opening sentence, the article is actually about the "Kobe Institute of Computing; Graduate School of Information Technology". After looking into the relevant websites, I have determined that there are two schools operated by one corporation:

  • 神戸情報大学院大学, literally "Kobe Information Technology Graduate University" - as the name suggests, it is the graduate school described in the article and offers a 2-year masters course.
  • 神戸電子専門学校, literally "Kobe Electronics Vocational School" - it is a vocational school offering 2-3 year diploma courses in various IT fields as well as a 4-year advanced diploma and a 1-year course. As well as obtaining a diploma, it seems students aim to pass national certification exams or obtain other qualifications. It's "official" English name is "Kobe Institute of Computing; College of Computing". Founded in 1958, it adopted its current Japanese name in 1965.
  • コンピュータ総合学園, literally "Comprehensive Computing Institution" - this is the name of the company which operates the two schools. At first it had the same name as the technical school, but changed it twice, adopting the current name in 1985. Based on the names of the two schools, one would assume they use English name "Kobe Institute of Computing", but I can't find any sources relating to the company specifically to confirm that.

So, here's my question. Should the article about the graduate school be moved the long title of Kobe Institute of Computing; Graduate School of Information Technology? If so, I think I can gather enough sources to make a separate article about the vocational school, which would logically go at Kobe Institute of Computing; College of Computing. Alternatively, should the two schools be at articles named Graduate School of Information Technology and College of Computing? These are both fairly generic names, but suprisingly are redlinks. I don't think they should both be included under the Kobe Institute of Computing title because they are each independently notable.

Any advice or suggestions would be warmly welcomed. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 04:31, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Social Mobility Index Comment

Is anyone on the WikiProject aware of the Social Mobility Index? Is this ranking notable enough to be included in a university article? Here is an example. Thanks, Bahooka (talk) 14:53, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

  • Some newbie was spamming them all over every university article a few months ago, adding them to the rankings tables and prominently featuring them ahead of other well-known rankings. That's too much, and I am guessing the newbie was an SPA promoting the particular ranking (SMI). If individual page editors want to add SMI on the basis of article-level consensus, that should be up to them. There's usually some variation from university to university what gets included. Please note: that's my personal opinion, not WikiProject consensus. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Move request at Talk:List of colleges affiliated with Delhi University

Just a courtesy notification as this move request has been pending and relisted. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 14:21, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Help needed at Diploma mill

An editor with a WP:COI removed "his" school and some others from Diploma mill. I'm going to need some help deciphering the sources to determine if these schools are truly reformed or if they are "reformed in name only."

There is a similar discussion about a school that has recently become accredited at least "in name" over on Talk:List of unaccredited institutions of higher education. Input from experienced editors is welcome over there as well. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Uh excuse me davidwr, it was not my school fyi. That's not accurate. You are trying to make this a COI. It's not.
Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:6009:9700:3849:1A24:B37A:1CD4 (talk) 06:31, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
I was talking about this editor, not you. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:45, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
Even if it's true that these schools are reformed (and most of the sources being offered are pretty marginal) none of that changes the original government statement, so I have restored the original complete list and added a few updates on two cases. This seesms a more useful approach than just removing names. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 20:04, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Soka University of America

Members of this project may be interested in this discussion. BMK (talk) 04:13, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

National College of Arts

The article National College of Arts needs an overhaul. It currently reads like an advertisement. GoodDay (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

It looks like it's over 50% copyright violations. The page history, as well as the history of another page that at one time had another article on this school but is now a redirect, is rife with copyvio-fixes. I've slapped a copyvio template on it and listed it at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2015 October 31. Help clean it up if you have the time. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:42, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Transcluded data for UK universities

I'm here to propose using templates to show information such as student population and population rank for all of the UK's universities. As it currently stands, articles are updated ad-hoc, so some have data from years ago and some are more recent; they also use different sources for the data. There are 163 universities and data is updated every year, so it's easy to see how manually updating it causes gaps.

My proposal is similar to that used for administrative areas in England (see Template:English district population and look at the examples 2/3 of the way down the doc page). The one for UK admin areas uses GSS or ONS codes to indentify them, and I'd propose using INSTID for universities, as these are published in the HESA's annual tables. The tables also include details such as undergraduate, postgraduate, full-time and part-time details in student enrollments, which will be included in the template systems for in the infoboxes. Below is an example of how it could be used in an infobox and in prose. I am unsure at this point whether the citation template is being overused; it might be better used only once for the student population.

{{Infobox university | name = The University of Manchester ... | students = {{HESA student population|INSTID=0204}} ({{HESA year}}) <ref>{{HESA citation}}</ref> | free_label = Student population rank | free = {{HESA student population rank|INSTID=0204}} [[List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrollment|(of {{HESA total}})]] | undergrad = {{HESA undergrad population|INSTID=0204}} ({{HESA year}}) <ref>{{HESA citation}}</ref> | postgrad = {{HESA postgrad population|INSTID=0204}} ({{HESA year}}) <ref>{{HESA citation}}</ref> ... | website = [http://www.manchester.ac.uk/ manchester.ac.uk] | logo = }} The '''University of Manchester''' has a total of {{HESA student population|INSTID=0204}} students enrolled ({{HESA year}}).

PS, the infobox looks neater when in edit mode. I would very much like to hear other people's opinions and suggestions for the task and will also answer any questions you have. Regards, Jolly Ω Janner 02:11, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

A question and a request for help

I recently came across Draft:Virginia Tech Roanoke Center in the mainspace. It was tagged as promotional and offhand, I could see where the concerns came from since it has/had some pretty promotional stuff. For example, the article listed the tuition prices per credit (which I've removed) and contains sentences like "Each course can be customized to effectively meet the needs of the organization or student." (Still in the article.) The editor can definitely use some help when it comes to the NPOV guidelines.

The facility does appear to award degrees from what I can see in the article, but it looks like it's a branch of VT itself since the degrees are awarded through Virginia Tech itself and not the center separately. It doesn't appear to be a separate college like University of Virginia's College at Wise, which is affiliated with UVA but still separate for the most part. However that the facility offers degrees could still count in its favor.

I've moved it to AfC so it can be improved, but the questions here are basically, is anyone interested in helping out and taking the editor under their wing and would this facility merit its own article separate from the main VT article? I'm not as familiar with universities as with other topics, so I figured I'd ask here for some clarification. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

@Tokyogirl79:, have you heard of Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user? It could be a great way for Huskers to improve their articles, but obviously you would have to ask them about it. I'm afraid like you, I'm not too familiar with university articles, but an extra point to consider may be that the Virgina Tech article is very large (too large IMO at first glance). Merging the Roanoke Center with it (it currently takes up one sentence on the VT article) would further increase the article's size. IMO it warrants its own article. Jolly Ω Janner 02:28, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Infobox university: Acronyms go in Other_names field?

Should we create a new field acronym/acronyms, or do they normally go in the Other_names field? Thanks. fgnievinski (talk) 14:34, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

That's what the "other names" field is for. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:56, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification; I've updated the docs accordingly: Template:Infobox_university/doc. Here's a recent usage: University of Colorado Boulder fgnievinski (talk) 15:25, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
BTW, the documentation said that other names are to be in English only, but that's not fair to ask of universities outside of the Anglosphere -- see, e.g., École Normale Supérieure --, so I've removed that remark. fgnievinski (talk) 15:25, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

University of Lippstadt, Germany

I have come across this university at: Margit Wennmachers. Does it have another name - can't find it on wikipedia. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:40, 9 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

The English version of its website refers to it as Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences, so that may be the best title for its article on English Wikipedia. There is no article for it here, but there is de:Hochschule Hamm-Lippstadt. It's a German university with 4,500 students, so I'm unsure if there will ever be an article on in at en Wikipedia. If one needs to be made, leave it as a WP:red link. Jolly Ω Janner 02:45, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

UK student population rank

I'm here to look for consensus on adding a parameter to the infoboxes for UK universities which show total student rank (i.e. the position the university lies in List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrollment). See Institute of Cancer Research for an example of its use. Currently, that article uses the free parameter, which is by default located below campus, so I would also propose an amendment to the infobox for a new parameter with its location below "Postgraduates". Please let me know if you support or oppose the proposal. Jolly Ω Janner 20:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Student protest information at Syracuse University

Can someone please take a look at recent edits made to Syracuse University? They purport to describe recent student protests but I think there are some significant issues with the edits. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 15:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

University of Canterbury

Resolved

There is some old POV-pushing at University of Canterbury that has flared up again. Some more eyes would be helpful. Toohool (talk) 23:53, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I replied at the talk page and this has since been resolved... for now. Don't hesitate to come back if it flares up again. Jolly Ω Janner 23:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Student Quantities

Hello,

This is a general question to all Higher Ed Project users. Should the Student Count/numbers reflect the headcount (e.g. simple number) or Full Year Equivalents (FYE) or Full Time Equivalents (FTE)? Is there a standard that should be used on Wikipedia? Blanksamurai (talk) 23:17, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The infobox says to use all times (i.e. full-time and part-time, so I think that would be the same as a headcount). Details such as FT and PT numbers could go elsewhere in the article if it is important. I've always seen UK universities using the headcount and I'm not aware of any differences for other countries, so I'd go for the headcount. Jolly Ω Janner 23:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Charges to use university athletic facilities

A disagreement at Ryerson University concerns whether the article should include:

The Mattamy Athletic Centre is free for Ryerson students to use, but faculty are charged $499 per year to access the university-owned facility.ref

I removed earlier text which had far too much detail, and which possibly was using the article to complain that faculty must pay a significant amount to use the university-owned facility. The article has costings for million-dollar purchases/donations, but the above $499 is the only usage costing. WP:NOTCATALOG#5 seems to apply. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 04:42, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this here, Johnuniq. I have responded at the article's talk page. Jolly Ω Janner 05:11, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

It has a purpose. It shows that the university charges different amounts to different categories of its community. I will remove the price if you remove the price the university paid to purchase the facility. If prices are irrelevant, then we should also remove the tuition costs and endowment figures from this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.90.34.31 (talk) 19:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Yale School of Management

I tagged this for copyright violations and promotional content. An employee of the school has made revisions, and asked me to review the article. I'm not sure whether the copyright issue persists, and I wonder, as well, whether the bias has been adequately resolved--are such articles, for instance, meant to list each are of study, or does this fall into the category of a directory, which we're not? Further attention from those well-versed in this project will be much appreciated. Thanks, 2601:188:0:ABE6:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 20:34, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Please use Template:Copyvio-revdel to ask that the copyright-violating revisions be deleted. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:57, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences

Wondering if someone from this WikiProject would mind taking a look at University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. I've tried cleaning it up a bit, but don't think there's enough significant coverage of the department itself to satisfy WP:ORG. Perhaps this should be redirected to University of Maryland, College Park#Programs? -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:42, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Updated Carnegie Classifications

Our colleagues in Bloomington have released a "public review" version of the updated Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

1. This is essentially a preview period so we shouldn't change the classification of any institution in an article until the classifications are finalized. I doubt anything will change from this preview but we're not in a rush and we should get things right.

2. I recommend that we find a way to programmatically update as many articles as possible instead of going about this haphazardly. Off the top of my head, some options for including this important information in articles include (a) adding it to the university infobox using an existing parameter, (b) adding one or more new parameters to the university infobox, (c) copying the university infobox to create a new U.S.-version and then adding one or more new parameters, (d) creating a new infobox or template (similar to the approach taken for rankings of U.S. colleges and universities), or (e) creating stock language that would be inserted into each article.

Thoughts? ElKevbo (talk) 23:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

In addition to infoboxes, I'd love to make Carnegie Classifications available in Wikidata. I proposed this property and would love comments and support over at Wikidata. I've been working in university-related Wikidata items for a while, and we now have IPEDS identifiers on almost all US institutions. This means we can import IPEDS data (and any other data using IPEDS identifiers) directly into Wikidata and Wikipedia. This may also fulfull ElKevbo's desire for programatic updating. Runner1928 (talk) 18:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! Does that mean that IPEDS information - enrollment, location, etc. - is already available or could easily be made available? Automatically importing that information and using it in infoboxes and articles is next is on my wishlist. ElKevbo (talk) 19:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Location, inception date, website, country, and type of university are probably the most complete data on university Wikidata entities so far. None are fully complete. I'm close to getting student count into Wikidata and there's already a property to support it. Some types of universities (historically black, land-grant, tribal) have that instance-of type fully complete. Most just say "university" but I'm going to disambiguate for private v. public based on IPEDS data. Yes, this information is definitely easily made available: you can just get a dump of IPEDS data, write a short script to convert into quick statements syntax, and click one button. I haven't done any true bot work since quick statements is so easy. If you want my script I'll post to Github. Runner1928 (talk) 17:26, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not advanced enough to make use of any code. I was just wondering if there are any data elements that are complete or complete enough to consider for some sort of automated processes to add content to articles or templates e.g., the student headcount parameter in the university infobox. ElKevbo (talk) 21:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Just some broad questions I had: Would editors leave the tag for Carnegie Classification blank if one currently doesn't exist? What data would you be seeking specifically to have automatically imported? How would you address discrepancies in the data? Blanksamurai (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
I can't answer for Runner1928 but I can interject that once the new classifications are imported then there should be very few Title IV-eligible institutions that don't have a complete set of classifications. That essentially covers all "legitimate" U.S. colleges and universities because there are very, very few legitimate institutions that don't receive federal financial aid. A more pressing concern will be that there isn't always a 1:1 mapping from IPEDS ID to Wikipedia article especially for institutions with multiple campuses. ElKevbo (talk) 21:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
I like the idea that you two have presented in terms of being able to keep some data consistent. I would propose the need to make an explicit policy so that users are aware of the change. I would think that constantly changing data like endowment and enrollment may be difficult to keep consistent as other sources may have published more recent data. In regards to the linking IPEDs ID, would the classification need to be extrapolated based on the 2008 or 2010 classifications? Or how could that issue be addressed? Blanksamurai (talk) 16:07, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Naming of Universities from Countries that use languages other than English

Hello all. I was recently working through a list of misspellings (insitution > institution) and found myself editing an article on a Malaysian university Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, with not only what at first seemd a typo, but also a word order based on the original Malay. I thought this was an obvious candidate for moving (probably to "Tunku Abdul Rahman University"), and raised the query on my talk page, with inconclusive results from some experienced editors I pinged.

I did also take a look at WikiProject Malaysia but that seems inactive.

There seems to be about 20 university articles (most in Malaysia with 1 in Brunei) that include this "unusual" spelling. Because these articles are listed in the Template {{ASAIHL}}, a search for "universiti " gives over a thousand results, with many of them being universities that use the template.

A quick look at the first 500 university articles linked to this project only shows 4 articles that are not titled in English (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, École Normale Supérieure and École nationale d'administration.

I think that, in general, that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) should apply to the Malaysian universities (and also Universiti Brunei Darussalam), but I welcome your thoughts. Robevans123 (talk) 18:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of leadership studies programs

The article List of leadership studies programs has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Wikipedia is not a college admissions guide or directory of college programs and websites

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ElKevbo (talk) 16:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

red-linked_universities?

See: Talk:Mazhar_Imam#red-linked_universities.3F. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 23:17, 16 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Category:Presidents of the Association for Asian Studies

Category:Presidents of the Association for Asian Studies, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for another editor nominated purging and renaming to Category:Association for Asian Studies. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 12:42, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Mitchell Hamline School of Law

On December 9 two law schools Hamline University School of Law and William Mitchell College of Law merged . The cleanest way to complete this appears to be to merge both source schools into a brand new article, Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Your input or contribution would be appreciated. Tiggerjay (talk) 02:42, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree a new article should be created with the relevant historical content from each college. It should also be explicitly noted in the lead for the new article that the Mitchell Hamline School of Law is the constituent law school of Hamline University. News source state that it is to be organized as a part of the university, rather than as a separate entity.Blanksamurai (talk) 18:47, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

"In popular culture" section of Pepperdine University article

A discussion is underway in the Talk page of Pepperdine University regarding the article's "In popular culture" section. Input from interested editors would be welcome. ElKevbo (talk) 01:46, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Only three editors have participated in this discussion and we are still at a complete standstill so I have opened an RfC ("Should the current "In popular culture" section be significantly modified or deleted?"). Please consider contributing your opinion! ElKevbo (talk) 10:40, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

AfC submission

Could anyone have a look at Draft:University of Kent, Keynes Conferences? Thank you, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 11:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Please review University of New England proposed edits

Hello, I'd like to request a review of my proposed edit to the introduction section of the University_of_New_England_(United_States) article. They are on the article's Talk section in the section titled Proposed edit to introduction dated 12 February 2016. All suggestions and guidance are greatly appreciated. Thanks. Evergreen678 (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Recent edits to Confucius Institute

Can some of you please take a look at Confucius Institute? I'm particularly worried about the recent edits that added a significant amount of material to the article that appears to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. This is particularly worrisome for me because these institutes are state-sponsored units explicitly charged with promoting Chinese culture and language (with some history of inappropriate state control and censorship of institutes on university campuses) so I would not be at all surprised if editors with specific POVs and COIs were to edit this article. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 16:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Edit war between two French universities

Hello all, I was pinged by a user to have a look at the somewhat biased edits on two French universities. Some French users seem to be having a go at each other. See my talk page. I've already left my comments on the articles' talk pages. I'm finding everything somewhat French oriented, and there is definitely some bias, but I'd appreciate the help of someone who's more experienced with educational articles. --Midas02 (talk) 19:20, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Categories for defunct / merged university

Westbrook College in Portland, Maine, United States existed as a stand alone institution until 1996, when it closed and merged with the University of New England (United States). Is it preferable to have separate categories for the two universities faculty and alumni or should all faculty and alumni be grouped under the University of New England?--TM 18:51, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Was the institution post 1996 a new body replacing both or was it UNW continuing? Westbrook should certainly have its own categories within the UNW tree. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:57, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
The University of New England was an already established university that absorbed Westbrook College. It seems that most of the prominent alumni of the college actually attended the institution when it was Westbrook Seminary.--TM 16:41, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Access to library resources for experienced editors interested in historical women's colleges

Hunter College is looking for a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar interested in women's education, historical women's colleges, or other topics at the intersection of history and gender studies. If you like to work on articles in these topic areas and would like remote access to a full suite of college library resources, including databases, journals, and ebooks, see the call for applications at the Visiting Scholars application page.

If the idea of access to university library resources is appealing to you but your interests lie elsewhere, the application page has information about other open possibilities as well. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:58, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Trouble finding references? The Wikipedia Library is proud to announce ...

The Wikipedia Library

There are up to 30 free one-year Alexander Street Press (ASP) accounts available to experienced Wikipedians through this partnership. To apply for free access, please go to WP:ASP.

Alexander Street Press is an electronic academic database publisher. Its "Academic Video Online: Premium collection" includes videos in a range of subject areas, including news programs (like 60 minutes) and newsreels, music and theatre, speeches and lectures and demonstrations, and documentaries. This collection would be useful for researching topics related to science, engineering, history, music and dance, anthropology, business, counseling and therapy, news, nursing, drama, and more. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 22:24, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

"Postdoctoral researcher"

The name, usage, topic and scope of Postdoctoral researcher is under discussion, see talk:Postdoctoral researcher -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 05:47, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Budget

Why the Budget in the English version is in Brazilian reais and not US dollars? Dollars would make more sense in an English page, no? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Targumferera (talk • contribs) 07:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Affiliated to and with

Is there a difference between "with" and "to" in:

See examples at Category:Lists of colleges affiliated to universities in India

I need to know because I want to do a page move from List of colleges affiliated to Uttar Pradesh Technical University to either List of colleges affiliated with Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University or List of colleges affiliated to Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University.

Thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:15, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Resolved
I figured "with" and "to" and the same and decided on "with". Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:03, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Article reassessment: Texas State University System

I have just spent several days heavily researching and expanding the article Texas State University System, currently a Stub-Class article. The WikiProject doesn't provide any definitive guidelines on articles such as this that deal with higher-ed systems with governing authorities overseeing multiple universities and colleges. Although numerous such articles exist dealing with such systems both in the U.S. and worldwide, most have low assessments. The most highly-assessed similar article I could find to use as guidance is University of Houston System which is assessed as Class B. I believe I have brought the TSUS article to at least the same level of quality as the U of H System article. I would appreciate having the TSUS article reviewed and reassessed, and hearing feedback regarding improvement suggestions and whether it could be taken to the next step for a GA review. Thank you. Fortguy (talk) 07:06, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

4icu.org

An Editor during a AFD Discussion raised a valid question whether 4icu.org is a WP:Reliable source as it is a search engine for Universities through it is one of comprehensive list of Universities worldwide and the discussion is taking place in the Reliable sources/Noticeboard .Would welcome users to comment either way .Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

John Cabot University draft article

Hi. I work for John Cabot University and have prepared a draft article about our university I was hoping could be used to substantially expand/improve the current stub. The draft is based on a close read of Wikipedia:College and university article advice.

I’ve been getting some conflicting advice on how to behave with a conflict of interest and what is acceptable content. For example, I’m told the draft is filled with unsourced content, but the only unsourced information is in the Lead, which I was told didn’t need sources. I’m told some sources are not independent enough, but the advice for university pages guide seems to suggest primary sources from a history professor should be acceptable. One editor old me it was inappropriate and potentially disruptive to suggest an entire draft on the Talk page, but others have told me this is best practice to avoid direct editing. One editor said he would review my draft, but never did.

Can someone please help me? I am trying to do what I thought was ethical best practice and what Wikipedia’s own guideline said was best practice for content and I’m just getting ping ponged all over the place.

Thank you so much.

Berenice at John Cabot University (talk) 14:38, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

I suggest proposing in the article's Talk page the specific changes you'd like to make to the current article. If what you're proposing is not obviously controversial and no one objects in a reasonable period of time (one week, maybe?) then I'd go ahead and make the proposed changes, one at a time and each with a clear edit summary. That would minimize the chances of someone objecting to a subset of your proposed edits reverting all of them by making it easy for them to just undo the specific one(s) that require further discussion. ElKevbo (talk) 17:14, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Incidentally, if the "primary source" to which you are referring is the Williams article then it seems highly unlikely that it is indeed a primary source. It's probably a secondary or tertiary source as the history is presumably based on primary sources such as meeting minutes, interviews, archival documents, etc. It's probably not an independent source since it appears to have been published in an alumni newsletter but if the material isn't controversial then that is a relatively minor problem that we usually overlook since it's also often intractable i.e., we'd have to omit a large amount of material from many articles if we adamantly insisted on completely independent sources for everything. ElKevbo (talk) 17:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for help

@ElKevbo: is on a Wiki-Break. Is anyone else able to help me? He suggested I edit the article slowly with detailed edit summaries, which I have done here, adding non-controversial information about the campus cited to independent books. When I have proposed changes on the Talk page, @Justlettersandnumbers: said it was inappropriate to ask volunteers to spend their time reviewing my suggestions, but when I made edits directly he reverted me saying I need to propose my changes on Talk. So I am not allowed to propose changes on Talk and also not allowed to make them in the article? Am I not allowed to contribute to the article? I just want to improve the page and I’m experiencing a lot of contradictions and conflicting instructions. Can someone please help? Thanks so much.

Berenice at John Cabot University (talk) 08:04, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Berenice, please read Talk:John Cabot University#Conflict of interest, and/or read the guidelines in the yellow box at WP:PAY. You are very strongly discouraged from editing the article John Cabot University (which is why I reverted your recent attempt to do so). However, you are always welcome to propose changes on the talk-page of the article using {{request edit}}; requests that are unduly long, or are not supported by independent reliable sources, are unlikely to be accepted. You might also take a look at WP:PAYTALK. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:37, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Alumni

Should an individual be included in a university's alumni category if they didn't finish the course/graduate?--obi2canibetalk contr 11:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Is the Highland Park Methodist Church on the campus of Southern Methodist University

The maps of Highland Park and University Park seem to say that the Highland Park Methodist Church is on the campus of Southern Methodist University. Is this true? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:44, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Rankings of universities in the lede

There was some disagreement at University of St Andrews which ultimately led to a DR/N case that however closed unresolved. I'm seeking consensus on the underlying questions:

  • Which rankings should be given in the lede? If the university is ranked both globally and nationally, which should be included (or both)? What about regional rankings? Rankings like "best under 50"?
  • If certain rankings are less than flattering (as is the case for the University of St Andrews: there is a huge discrepancy between the ARWU and the QS/THE), should they still be given?
  • If individual faculties or subjects are ranked, what guidelines are there on which should be given?

At the moment I think a reasonable solution is to give roughly 7-10 rankings (if available) in the lede. The three major international rankings (ARWU, QS and THE) should always be given if available, and for the remaining 4-7 rankings, give the university's best or most notable rankings. So for example if a university has a physical sciences department that performed much better than its other departments, that could be given, while for universities that do really well on national tables (like the University of St Andrews) and / or the national tables attract more attention in the country, that could be given as well. I'll say though that I'm not too expert on this topic, so there might easily be problems with this proposal that I've not considered. Banedon (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Why should any ranking be used in the lead ? Especially "the best" rankings. The only place for them is in the article. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 08:29, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Because, e.g., an article on the National University of Singapore should indicate that it is one of the most prestigious universities in Asia, and rankings are an easy way to establish that. Banedon (talk) 08:37, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It's exactly what must be avoided at all costs. If you try to prove something, you are definitely doing something wrong. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 08:49, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
In that case, I would still give the three major international rankings even if nothing else is given, since they are so widely followed. Banedon (talk) 09:01, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
What are ""the three major international rankings"" ? In France, only the "Shanghai Ranking" is well known... so there is no reason to use only 3 rankings. Again, there is not a single reason to mention any of them in the lead. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 09:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Then how come WP:UNIGUIDE has an explicit section on rankings which mentions the lede? Banedon (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It's only an essay. Still, it says that "In the lead, do not use rankings to synthesize an image of the institution, whether good or bad". XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 09:59, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
All the more reason to come to consensus about the place of rankings in the lede then. I still favour having the major international rankings in the lede, and any other rankings available to give an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the institution. Banedon (talk) 00:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Clearly, if you can't find anyone else to support your view, it can't be consensual. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 06:15, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Consensus indicates lots of people agreeing. At the moment, it's just you and me. Banedon (talk) 06:35, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
I have discussed this issue with other members and no one sees the need for every university ranking to be included in the lede. Doing so would disrupt the majority of university articles and all the work and effort put in by editors. In my opinion, it is unnecessary for every university ranking to be made obligatory on a university's article lede, it leaves the article lede looking cluttered. As long as the article includes the international rankings somewhere on its page (ideally in the Rankings & Reputations section), I don't see the need for it. Have a look at the 'featured colleges', specifically University of California, Riverside and Dartmouth College which make no mention of every single university ranking on the article's lede or any mention at all. EmyRussell (talk) 11:08, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Certainly not every ranking should be in the lede. The question though is that which rankings (if any) should be there. It's hard for me to approve of the rankings given in the UC Riverside lede for example, because I think the international rankings are the ones that should be given, if any rankings at all are given. Similarly, reading the lede for Dartmouth College it feels slightly incomplete since the rankings are missing. In fact the Dartmouth College lede is off in the sense that it is also one of the institutions which perform badly in international rankings but superbly in national rankings, and the lede only mentioned its national ranking in one of the references. It's possible that I am biased here, but I personally ascribe most importance to the three major international tables in part because they allow comparison of universities across different countries and continents, and I'm not the only one to do so (refer the sources mentioned in the University of St Andrews talk page).
Question is, if this has been discussed before, what was the consensus? If this has not been discussed before, can we come to a consensus on how to handle it, across all university articles? Banedon (talk) 06:49, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate your response Banedon, however I must disagree with it. I don't think that international rankings trump national rankings given their widely different methodologies and their inherent bias against small non-specialist institutions such as Dartmouth. As I said before, as long as these universities do not omit their international rankings on their Wikipedia page (i.e. their international ranking placing should be in their 'Rankings and Reputations' section) then there is no need to do what you wish as comparisons can still be made this way. Dartmouth and Riverside are featured articles for a reason. It is of my personal view that it would be impossible to enforce X ranking on every university page as it would give X ranking undeserved legitimacy against the other possible rankings as well as because how vastly different some universities perform within international rankings. I am content with the status quo. EmyRussell (talk) 11:19, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Well then if international rankings don't trump national rankings, why do national rankings trump international ones? Putting certain rankings in the lede like is the case with Dartmouth and Riverside already gives those rankings undeserved legitimacy against the other possible rankings. Also you say "I am content with the status quo". What is the status quo? Insert national rankings into the lede and leave everything else out? What if there are no national rankings? Banedon (talk) 13:04, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
National rankings do not trump international rankings, you will notice that there are pages which only mention their international rankings rather than their national ranking. I do not wish to change these articles as well. The status quo being how articles are edited according to how the editors best see fit. There is no strict standard across all university pages regarding rankings in university article ledes, with some university pages making mention of only their international rankings or only their national rankings, a mixture or both or no mention at all. People can make comparisons by scrolling to the Rankings and Reputation section of articles - I have spent significant time updating the infobox of these sections for this reason alone. EmyRussell (talk) 14:18, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
If the status quo is to edit according to "how the editors best see fit", then I think it should be changed. Keeping the status quo means that I could revert the University of St Andrews page again, which would probably lead to us repeating this same discussion about which rankings to have in the lede again, except this time we do it on the University of St Andrews talk page instead of here. This same discussion could easily happen as well on any other university's page. I would much rather choose something more objective and stick to it for every university. Banedon (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
I am curious as to why you are so insistent on making these changes to the University of St Andrews page only? There are plenty of other article pages which are similar to St Andrews' in terms of rankings in lede. Your edit history shows that it is the only university article page you edit and you are not part of the WikiProject University. As I said before, the problem is is that objectivity is not possible. Even right now, you are the only person who wants this in the WikiProjects talk page. I would prefer to hear the view of other editors who share your view. EmyRussell (talk) 10:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Because I happened on that page, made the change, and was reverted basically. I think objectivity is possible: simply choose some rankings (again, the international ones, since national rankings only apply to that country) and give them for all universities. If international rankings are not available then say they are not available. Also on this talk page there are only three participants, and we all want different things - XIIIfromTOKYO above prefers to completely remove rankings from the lede. I don't know anyone who shares my view, but I also don't know anyone who shares yours, or XIIIfromTOKYO's. I'd advocate a RfC at this point, just to get some consensus on this issue. Banedon (talk) 06:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
I share EmyRussell's views. SubcommandanteLOL also makes a similar case to I and you clearly saw our conversations in previous talk threads. It would be preferable if we are honest and and upfront about this, don't lie and say you don't know anyone else who shares that opinion please. Kioj156 (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
What talk thread are you referring to? Because I don't remember seeing any such thread. Plus, I will emphasize, if we adopt the "as editors see fit" position then you must be ready to justify, e.g., the University of St Andrews article listing the THE world ranking in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities but not the wider institution-wide ranking in the lede (and every other currently-listed ranking in the lede besides), because I am going to challenge its inclusion. I started this thread here because I believe it's an issue that applies to all universities as a whole. "As editors see fit" does not resolve the issue; it just moves it to every university's individual talk page. Banedon (talk) 00:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
Incidentally if one looks at Imperial College London, the lede references its high placing in the QS and THE tables, which is rather to be expected considering it placed so well in the international tables than the national ones. Similarly the University of Manchester mentions its international rankings instead of its national ones (and that's in spite of Kioj156's arguments that national tables are more widely followed). As XIIIfromTOKYO mentioned, it is very much like academic boosterism, and not likely to be resolved by "as editors see fit". In a choice between the three positions on the table so far, "no rankings in the lede" would be my second choice. Banedon (talk) 06:48, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, it's been almost a month without new input, which means the dispute is still unresolved. If nobody objects I'm going to start a RfC on this, with the three options discussed above ("as editors see fit", "list certain rankings only" and "no rankings in lede"). Banedon (talk) 01:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Request for Comment on Peer Review

The List of Georgetown University alumni has been nominated for peer review. All comments are welcome on how to improve the article in anticipation for Featured List nomination. You can comment here. Ergo Sum 02:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Infobox world university ranking

I've done some adjustments to the {{Infobox world university ranking}} to reflect current rankings. I think the template needs a rethink. But to make all the transcluding pages updated, please feel free to help updating one of them.

I've allready updated:

--Mysteriumen•♪Ⓜ •♪talk ♪• look 22:26, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox US university ranking

Hi WikiProject Universities, for those concerned, please take a look at Template talk:Infobox US university ranking#Template-protected edit request on 28 September 2016. If there are no disputes about the notability of WSJ, a template editor can make the update accordingly. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 19:04, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

RfC: University rankings in lede

There is a consensus for university rankings to be mentioned in the lede on university articles as the individual editor sees fit. If there is a dispute between two or more editors as to whether or not they see fit in any single article, it can be resolved through consensus or, if necessary, RfC, within the Talk page of that specific article. At the present time there is no consensus to impose a blanket style mandate. LavaBaron (talk) 14:39, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Which, if any, university rankings should be mentioned in the lede?

Should there be 1) no rankings in lede, 2) international rankings only in lede, 3) rankings which can be sourced as widely followed in lede, 4) or do as the editor sees fit (which is the status quo)? What about subject rankings?

Banedon (talk) 01:14, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Background on the RfC question. Possibly not neutral.

See also WP:Avoid academic boosterism. There is a tendency for university articles to portray the university in question favourably. One of the ways bias can manifest itself is by selectively choice of which rankings to mention in the lede. Things to consider:

  1. As far as I can tell, currently the status quo is that whichever rankings the editors of that university see as relevant, they can include.
  2. There are three widely followed international rankings, the THE, QS and ARWU, but there are also lots of others. See College and university rankings. However some of them can be sourced as "widely followed", e.g. [8]
  3. Some but not all countries have national rankings, see e.g. Rankings of universities in the United Kingdom, Rankings of universities in Canada.
  4. Some universities do well on international rankings but poorly on national ones (e.g. University of Manchester. Others do well on national rankings but poorly on international ones (e.g. Durham University). See also e.g. Rankings_of_universities_in_the_United_Kingdom#Disparity_with_global_rankings.
  5. Some universities do poorly on some rankings, but strongly in others, e.g. National University of Singapore.
  6. Some universities do much better on certain subject rankings than others, e.g. Carnegie Mellon University specializes in computer science.


To me, number 2 - international rankings only - can be dismissed as making no sense. International rankings, of necessity, use a much smaller set of data than reputable national rankings, and are therefore likely to be less informative and more prone to biases. They are also not available for all institutions. National rankings are also more likely to be useful to a reader trying to chose a university – very few such searches are going to be global. This seems a complete non-starter.
Number 1 - omitting them altogether - has its attractions, but rankings are part of university life, and putting significant ones up front makes them easily accessible to the reader.
Number 3 - putting in all significant rankings - is another possible solution, but some pages with large orders may want to omit the rankings, or mention them descriptively rather than giving the precise numbers (see, e.g., UCL)
Number 4 is my favoured option. This should not lead to a complete free-for-all, as long as the normal rules of Wikipedia and guidelines against boosterism, etc., are followed. NPOV requires contrary opinions from reputable sources to be given, for instance, which should prevent most boosterism. Further guidelines might be discussed as to what counts as boosterism, particularly with regards to including national vs international rankings.
My take on such guidelines would be:
  • If rankings are given or described, significant national rankings (if they exist) should always be included.
  • If a university is positioned as an international institute, significant international rankings should be included (I.e ARWU, THE, QS at the time of writing) if national rankings are (thus allowing them to be omitted for universities where they're irrelevant). Essentially all universities are national, so (if they exist) national rankings should always be given if international rankings are given. If a university is positioned as an international institute but is not included in international rankings, this should be mentioned if rankings are given (e.g. Sunderland, with over 25% international students).
  • Faculty/subject rankings should only be given for specialist institutions. Giving a subject ranking just because the university has done well in it that year is boosterism; giving the rankings in agriculture for the Royal Agricultural University is not.
  • Rankings that stand as a significant achievement might justify their presence in the lede on those grounds, e.g. Coventry becoming the first post-1992 university to break into the top 20 of a national ranking could be mentioned without having to put all rankings in the lede. A quick test for this would be whether the achievement continues to be significant once the next year's rankings are out - if yes, then it is justified as part of the institutions history, rather than as a ranking.
Robminchin (talk) 05:32, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
1) no rankings in lede.
"International rankings" are not really international. In France, only the ARWU is well known. So selecting a few can only introduce a cultural bias (and academic boosterism...).
XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 09:06, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
That's a good point. I was assuming that which international rankings were included was well agreed on. If the major international rankings are not actually international, then possibly they should be left out entirely. I don't think the same applies to national ranking, where the culture is much more uniform, so including these (in places where they exist) should be less problematic.
In the UK, it's clearly the QS and THE that are popular, and ISTR a story saying that in India it was ARWU and THE. If each country uses a subset of the same few international rankings, then using these might be okay. Determining this sounds tricky though! Robminchin (talk) 14:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
With regards to international rankings being less likely to be available for all institutions, I actually left out the obvious "national rankings only" in the RfC question because I thought the reverse was obviously true! Many countries don't have their own national rankings (such as National University of Singapore, mentioned in the background section of the RfC) while the THE, QS and ARWU cover much more. At some level, I guess, we are all biased. Banedon (talk) 05:44, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
It's true that national rankings are not available for all countries, but where they do exist they are normally pretty much comprehensive, while the global rankings are far from comprehensive. A country not having a national ranking applies equally to all universities in that country, while the global rankings only sample the "top" universities in each country (for some values of top), leading to far more spotty coverage.
It's quite possible that universities will only be listed in some of the global rankings, for instance, and it's impossible to know whether this is because they were ranked outside of the top N on the other rankings or they didn't think the rankings were important enough to return the forms. A recent example of this, local to me, can be seen at [9] - the University of Puerto Rico is not ranked in the THE table (although it is on the QS table), but nobody knows if this is because it is outside the top 980 or if it simply didn't return the forms. This is part of a more general problem THE has with Latin America, as an analysis on the QS website says: "Universities in Latin America have a much stronger presence in the QS rankings, partly due to the fact that many seem to have opted out of providing the data required for inclusion in the Times Higher Education ranking. As shown above, this means many leading Latin American universities featured in the QS list do not appear at all in THE – including Argentina’s Universidad de Buenos Aires, which this year reached the highest position ever achieved by a Latin American institution in the QS World University Rankings."
Showing only comprehensive national rankings, in contrast, would seldom have such problems. If a country doesn't have them, then there is nothing to show, so for somewhere like NUS it would then make sense to show the international rankings. Overall, this demonstrates that having a single rule (except for no rankings at all) that works for everywhere is close to impossible, which is why I support option (4) "do as the editor sees fit". Robminchin (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
I think that Robminchin summarises the arguments well. On the whole I favour (4) "do as the editor sees fit" with the usual caveat that boosterism should be resisted. I think that we should be careful about trying to make all university articles fit a very tightly defined pattern when they are in reality a very variable group of organisations. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:29, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Any opinion then on subject rankings? If a university does poorly on most rankings but gets ranked (relatively) highly in a specific subject, would you say that qualifies for inclusion in the lede? Banedon (talk) 05:44, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
  • I would generally be in favor of a combination of option 1 and option 4. Rankings in uni articles inevitably devolve into boosterism and undue weight and WP does not have the manpower to ensure this does not happen in every single uni article. However, I am swayed by arguments that there may be special cases where the university's ranking is due to a significant achievement, and is described as such in reliable sources, and so am against a categorical prohibition. I would support a strong presumption against including rankings in the lede that can only be overcome by a significant number of reliable sources discussing the university's ranking in an appropriate context (i.e., listicles should not count). James (talk/contribs) 22:31, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
It seems to me that if WP doesn't have enough editors (which is true), then this would tend towards maintaining the status quo rather than having this discussion again on almost every university talk page when people try to remove the rankings. Boosterism is non-NPOV, and thus something that can be spotted and argued against by any editor, not just the few of us involved in the discussion here.Robminchin (talk) 00:09, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Keeping tuition will make students value their education and appreciate school more. Privileged students who receive financial support from their parents have little to no appreciation for the position they're in. Privileged students who receive financial support from their parents have little to no appreciation for the position they're in and often times they will fail if they do not quickly realize that there are students out there who are more "hungrier" to achieve more. Tuition covers the cost of paying qualified teachers, resources, and retain more academic independence(less reliant on government funding) and if the budget cuts are made the employment goes down and so does the quality of the school. Colleges should be academically independent so the agenda of producing graduates matches with the level of competitiveness in the real world. 8.41.197.251 (talk) 04:25, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

  • I would support having no rankings in the leading paragraph. Rankings change on a regular basis, as do the organizations creating the rankings, which may not agree. Including all that detail would make the section too long. A summary of more neutral information such as location, areas of specialty, private or public, etc. is more suitable at the beginning of the article "Notable" rankings (which are written about in independent, reliable sources not connected with either the universities or the ranking organizations) could always be included later in the article. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:11, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Nomination of List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States from BYU for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States from BYU is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States from BYU (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Prince-Archbishop of Wikipedia (talk) 21:44, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Isles International University

Not for the first time, the article on the organization called "Isles International University" has recently undergone bowdlerization. It would help if a few more disinterested editors could keep an eye on it. -- Hoary (talk) 14:30, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

The Los Angeles Film School

There's an old lawsuit that was dismissed in the The Los Angeles Film School entry that I'd like editors here to take a look at. I've gone into more detail about why I think it should be removed in a message here.

I'm posting as a representative of Full Sail University, a sister-school to The Los Angeles Film School. My financial conflict of interest prevents me from making any edits myself. Any suggestions and feedback about the lawsuit material are welcome. --Tylergarner (talk) 23:58, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Higher education in France outside universities

There is a request for comment about Sciences Po that might interest the whole project. Because it seems a lot of French higher education institutions outside universities are adverstisements. I changed the SP page (from this to this) but users argue from the École Polytechnique page, that needs to be cleaned too. --Launebee (talk) 16:51, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

You should also check Panthéon-Assas University. The French article was turned into a big piece of advertisement, and the same personn is working on the English article. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 20:12, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

January 2017 at Women in Red


January 2017

Women Philosophers & Women in Education online editathons
Faciliated by Women in Red

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Ipigott (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Everglades University & COI

Needs eyes. COI issues, ie[10] with the edit summary " Update our rankings for the newest released information)". It's User:CrissyH (see User talk:CrissyH for other editors trying to explain coi) and I'd like to know why these rankings weren't removed when U.S. News moved Everglades to "unranked" due to incorrect data. I'm also wondering what to do about material about its student debt. I want to be fair, but [11] and [12] aren't encouraging. The original and possibly inaccurate student debt numbers are here]. Doug Weller talk 15:29, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

University of Edinburgh - School of Engineering

Hi, the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Regius Chair in Engineering in 2018 and would like to hold a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 11 January 2017 (with the potential for further editing sessions in run-up to 2018) to improve the coverage regarding the School of Engineering. As they first proposed to have staff at the school of engineering edit the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering this has been flagged as a Conflict of Interest issue. Objective distance has been stressed to them so the staff members will avoid editing pages where there is COI... but the question is how much distance would be okay if they did still want the School of Engineering Wiki page updated? i.e. could a library member of staff connected to the university but not to the school of engineering edit the school of engineering page, for instance? Or could a retired member of staff edit the page? Obviously, it would be better if it was someone completely independent but if a student, member of the public, library member of staff or retired faculty member wanted to edit the page what would be the best course of action to comply with COI? Cheers, Stinglehammer (talk) 15:46, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:FCOI says that "An editor has a financial conflict of interest when they write about a topic with which they have a close financial relationship. This includes being an owner, employee, contractor, investor or other stakeholder." This would appear to indicate that staff should not participate. However, WP:PSCOI states under 'Practices not regarded as COI': "Employees at cultural and academic institutions: We want experts editing Wikipedia articles. Merely being employed by an institution is not a conflict of interest." These would appear to be saying that people employed at universities don't have a COI when editing pages about that university. This would appear to clear library members of staff not actually connected to the School of Engineering (but I'm not a wiki-lawyer). As far as I can see, a student, member of the public, or retired faculty member has no financial interest and so no COI (although all the normal caveats in WP:BOOSTER still apply of course). Robminchin (talk) 22:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for this. I've passed this on and the staff here are much more aware of avoiding COI and WP:BOOSTER. Our plan now is for staff to create/edit historic engineering pages related to faculty and alumni with a stress on factual information focused on relevance & denuded of WP:BOOSTER. If there are existing alumni pages then looking to add place of education info links to the Wiki page and Wikidata items if it is not there at present so we can end the day with a visual Histropedia timeline. Members of the public will be attending so they can independently update the School of Engineering page from reliable sources so that it has more information along the lines of the University of Cambridge page. nB: We are very conscious to avoid COI and WP:BOOSTER so please advise if we're straying into those minefields. Cheers, Stinglehammer (talk) 16:07, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Golpaygan university of technology

Should Golpaygan university of technology be redirected to Golpayegan University of Engineering, or are they two different places? Art LaPella (talk) 07:07, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Princeton University alumni subcategories by decade??

Does anyone know where the discussion occurred that allowed for all of the subcategories that breaks up Category:Princeton University alumni by decade? I think it's a dangerous trend to set and makes navigation unnecessarily difficult. Jrcla2 (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me like User:MainlyTwelve proposed the breakup in this edit [13] and then started implementing it almost immediately [14]. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 18:25, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
That looks right.--MainlyTwelve (talk) 19:23, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of modifications to the Academic degrees template

I have proposed modifications to Template:Academic degrees at Template talk: Academic degrees#Possible modification. Please join in if you have an opinion to share. Robminchin (talk) 20:48, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

A well-intentioned user, Wikidude10000 (talk · contribs), has begun adding extra bars to existing university navboxes that include "location" just below the university name, and then a bottom bar that includes enrollment, founded year, and endowment, such as here and here. Quite a few have already been added to several templates. The question here is has there been some kind of consensus to add this? It seems like more more item that needs to be updated regularly now since the navboxes appear to me turning into secondary infoboxes. It's hard enough keeping each university article up to date with enrollment and endowment figures, but now we need to add the template to that list every time the numbers change? Further, are the enrollment numbers for the entire university system? The main campus? Same goes for location, since many universities have multiple campuses. Seems to me the navbox should have items that change as little as possible, not stats that need updated on a regular basis, but perhaps I missed a discussion on this. Curious what other editors think. --JonRidinger (talk) 03:25, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems very odd to me – these should be in the infobox and don't, as far as I understand, belong in the navbox. Robminchin (talk) 04:19, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
This seems to have been added to a large number of the US navboxes. I would question whether this is useful, the article already will contain this information and its likely to become out of date. I feel we should revert all these changes Aloneinthewild (talk) 14:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
I would argue that some of the changes (such as location and establishment date) are useful enough that a user can find without having to resort to the main page. Granted, maybe the endowment and student count is a bit dubious to keep, but the former two are constant and key for the university/college. Wikidude10000 (talk) 02:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Establishment date I can understand, though it's not something that needs to be in the navbox (though I'm not wholly opposed to it being there). The navbox is to connect similar articles, not contain bits of info from the infobox. Just because something might seem "useful" doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be in the navbox. Location is a bit tricky, though, and I recommend against it. Not all universities are located in a single place. These navboxes are typically for entire university systems, not a single main campus, so having a single location is inaccurate for quite a few of them. Endowments and enrollments aren't dubious as much as they're superfluous and make more work for editors to keep updated. Again, in the end, if readers want to know those details, they can easily go to the main university article and look at the infobox. That's why we have infoboxes and navboxes; they serve different purposes. I would highly recommend obtaining some kind of consensus before continuing large-scale additions. You could end up making more work for yourself and/or others. --JonRidinger (talk) 06:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Lebanon Valley College lost lore and traditions

Was wondering if someone from WP:UNI would mind taking a look at Lebanon Valley College#Lost lore and traditions? The entire section is unsourced and seems to be nothing but WP:OR at first glance? Is this kind of section typical for university articles? I was going to go in a try and make it more encyclopedic, but am not sure if they would just be a waste of time if the entire section is basically unsourced trivia. Looking through the article's edit history, it seems the section has been the cause of edit warring in the past, but there's nothing about it on the article's talk page. Anyway, any suggestion on how to proceed would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:17, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

A quick look around suggests that the "annual murder" at least has some sources that could be added, and the Death League does technically reference The Quittapahilla 1918 and 1919 (a college magazine, some editions appear to be available online). It could certainly do with a lot of work to track down references and make it more encyclopedic, but it probably isn't OR. Robminchin (talk) 12:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Robminchin for taking a look at this. I've tagged the section as "unreferenced" and left the content as is for the time being. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:33, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Universities central at Women in Red on IWD during March 2017

Info and invitation. Women in Red has a drive during March to create and improve articles on women alumni of universities. International Women's Day is on March 8th and we invite others to mirror the event in the UK in Cambridge. Please sign up or ask for help at Women in Red. Hope you can make it. We have tools that will allow you to find missing women alumni from any other university. We are interested in editors who want to work in any language. You are invited to contribute on line throughout the month of March. Victuallers (talk) 08:19, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Alumni Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology

The list of alumni on Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology is growing out of control and is taking over the article. To my opinion, it is becoming self-defeating, as nobody will read that long list of names.

True, such a long list is allowed as long as the alumni have their own article or have sufficient proof of being an alumni.

What I hope for is that people start creating articles about the alumni mention here and in that way proof that the persons mentioned are really noteworthy! The Banner talk 13:02, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

If it's getting too large, it might be worth considering splitting off a separate "List of <university name> people" article (e.g List of Harvard University people, List of University of Oxford people), with only the most notable alumni kept on the main page.Robminchin (talk) 16:26, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
The essay Wikipedia:College and university article advice sugggests that lists of alumni should only include those meeting Wikipedia notability. I'd suggest simply commenting out all those who don't currently have an en.Wikipedia article, and adding them back as and when articles on them are written. I don't think that just "sufficient proof of being an alumni" is justification for inclusion - someone could transcribe the entire list of graduates. PamD 22:45, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion at Talk:Deltopia

I started the merger discussion at Talk:Deltopia#Merge into another article?. I invite you to comment. --George Ho (talk) 05:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Apparent COI editing at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology

An editor with an apparent COI is edit-warring to retain promotional material at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. I don't seem to be getting through to him or her. Can someone else please intervene? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 15:09, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, ElKevbo. How about telling those about Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials and WP:OTRS? Shall I tell the editor(s) directly, or can you do it? --George Ho (talk) 05:09, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
If you think that would be helpful then by all means reach out to them! I don't think that copyright is the pressing concern here, however. They shouldn't be editing their employer's article. ElKevbo (talk) 14:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
I don't know the resolution to this editing dilemma, ElKevbo. Suitable venues to seek assistance would be WP:help desk, WP:editor assistance/Requests, or WP:VPP. If seeking help to improve Wikipedia is not warranted needed, I would suggest either of the latter two. I would recommend "editor assistance" if the issue is not much of a big deal. --George Ho (talk) 18:14, 2 March 2017 (UTC); edited. 18:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Notice about adminship to participants at this project

Many participants here create a lot of content, may have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Change in U.S. News & World Report Law School "Top 14" Rankings

(I'm cross-posting this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law.)

U.S. News & World Report is about to release (or has just released) their latest rankings of law schools. Some editors are focused on the change in the so-called "Top 14" which have collectively been stable for several years but have just changed with one institution dropping out and another institution rising to number 14. These same people are rushing to edit articles, particularly Law school rankings in the United States‎‎, to update this information. Unfortunately, much of the editing is quite sloppy as there are many extant resources that refer to the "Top 14" but the new edits are not only changing the list of the current top ranked institutions but they're also changing what these older resources supposedly say, making many confusing grammatical errors, etc. Can someone with more patience, interest, and available time please take a look at this and help ensure that this and other articles (e.g., Law school in the United States) don't become confusing, misleading messes? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 19:04, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, don't keep us in suspense! Who's in and who's out? ;) Esrever (klaT) 19:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
IIRC, Georgetown dropped to 15 and Texas rose to 14. I think that someone leaked the rankings yesterday or the day before so folks were already in a tizzy then. (I haven't even looked to see if they've been officially released yet; this is not an area of any special interest for me.) ElKevbo (talk) 19:50, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Inconsistent naming of articles for the successors of the University of Paris

At University of Paris#Successors and legacy are neatly listed the 13 successors to the University of Paris system. The titles of the articles on these successors are terribly inconsistent, with respect to the presence or lack of numbering reflecting the old system, degree of conformance to the name of the school given in the second column, use of Roman or Arabic numerals, presence or absence of hyphens, and the use or non-use of diacriticals:

Old name New name Article title
University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University Pantheon-Sorbonne University
University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas University Panthéon-Assas University
University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle University University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
University of Paris IV Paris-Sorbonne University Paris-Sorbonne University
University of Paris V René Descartes University Paris Descartes University
University of Paris VI Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University
University of Paris VII Denis Diderot University Paris Diderot University
University of Paris VIII University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis Paris 8 University
University of Paris IX Paris Dauphine University Paris Dauphine University
University of Paris X University of Paris Ouest Paris Nanterre University
University of Paris XI University of Paris Sud University of Paris-Sud
University of Paris XII University of Paris Est Paris 12 Val de Marne University
University of Paris XIII University of Paris Nord Paris 13 University

The inconsistencies can even continue within an article: Inside the article Paris 13 University, the school is first identified as "University of Paris 13" and then as "University Paris-13".

Might someone acquainted with the ways of the university community in Paris want to have a go at establishing a convention for naming these schools? Largoplazo (talk) 08:32, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

It has been a problem on the French Wikipedia for years. These universities have a legal right to chose a name, and to change it. So basically, as soon as there is a new guy in charge of the communication, there is a new name, of a new spelling.XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 09:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
and Paris Dauphine University... is no longer a university, despite its name. XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 09:20, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Wow, I see what you mean. Going to the universities' own websites, I find Université Paris 8 and Université Paris 13, while, for 12, I find Université Paris Est Créteil Val de Marne (with the word Créteil missing from the article's title). But, also, I find that University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle is an article about a university that calls itself Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, so the order in our article title is wrong and uses a Roman numeral where the university uses an Arabic numeral. Blah.
I came upon all this while reviewing an article about an academic with a degree from "Paris 13 University", where his own resume says "Paris Nord".Largoplazo (talk) 10:36, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
And sometimes a resume can say something like "graduated from the Sorbonne"...
There is a way to fix these inconsistencies, if it is decided that only the name used by the official decrees can be used for the titles. Something like "Université Paris-VIII", "Université Paris-XIII"... XIIIfromTOKYO (talk) 12:36, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Please keep in mind that we do not rely solely on the desires (official websites, marketing communications, style guides, etc.) of subjects when determining the title of articles. It's an important consideration but our policy focuses on "the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources." ElKevbo (talk) 13:52, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
That's right, ElKevbo, but writers who want to refer to the university in English might well go to the English language page on the university website to establish the correct name. I'm not sure that happens all that often. I don't think we necessarily have to be consistent any more with regard to their common descent. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:03, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Location of University of Notre Dame

There is a new discussion of the location of the University of Notre Dame on Talk:University of Notre Dame--Jahaza (talk) 18:01, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Montpellier Business School

That should be the name, it seems to me, per their website. No-one is going to find them in Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier Business School. Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK has a link with them (if I have the right institution), and the name used there is a redlink and seems to be out of date. Any objections to moving it? Itsmejudith (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Bakerganj Government College

Would someone from this WikiProject mind taking a look at Bakerganj Government College and assessing it? It's was just created by a new SPA account and it is not supported by any sources. Assuming its notable enough for a stand-alone article, it's going to probably need a bit of clean up. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:18, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

It's also a blatant WP:COPYVIO from [15]. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you taking a look Jonathan A Jones. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Now speedy deleted. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 14:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Potential COI edits at Boston University

Can someone else please look at the edits made by User:BUmarcom at Boston University? Given his or her username and exclusive focus on that article, I worry that he or she may have an undeclared and unaddressed conflict of interest. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 17:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

There seems a reasonably high likelihood that Boston University Marketing and Communications http://www.bu.edu/marcom/ are linked to that account. Given the obviousness of the name it is probably innocent ignorance of the COI policy, so your current effort to engage them seems like the best approach. Robminchin (talk) 22:16, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Royal Military Academy (Belgium)

Should we merge Category:Alumni of Royal Military Academy of Belgium with Category:Royal Military Academy (Belgium) alumni ? Nezdek (talk) 10:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

That would seem sensible. I would suggest merger under the name Royal Military Academy (Belgium) to match the institution's wikipage. Robminchin (talk) 15:07, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
@Robminchin: I agree with that. As I don't know very well how is it done, could you please merge as you said ? Nezdek (talk) 17:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
It looks like the procedure is to propose a merger at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion. I have now done that. Robminchin (talk) 22:38, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Would someone mind taking a look at DMI College of Engineering and DMI Group of Institutions assessing them to see if they are notable enough per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES and WP:LISTN respectively? Thanks in advance. --Marchjuly (talk) 01:07, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Note, firstly, that WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is a statement of results rather than a guideline for notability. However, the general outcome has been that higher education institutions are normally considered notable if they are "independently accredited degree-awarding institutions". As it stands, the DMI College of Engineering article demonstrates that it awards degrees, but not that it is independently accredited (or the local equivalent).
Looking more generally, a university should be able to meet the standard guidelines for notability, in a nutshell "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". The references on the DMI College of Engineering are mostly not independent and those that are do not (to my mind) qualify as "significant coverage".
None of this is to say that DMI College of Engineering is non-notable. But my feeling is that, as it currently stands, the article does not conclusively demonstrate notability. Robminchin (talk) 19:32, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look Robminchin. The instituion's article was deleted since it was created by a block-evading editor. The college's was created by the same editor prior to their block, but as you say it has some major notability issues. It's also possible the editor is connected to the university in some way other than simply being a "student". Anyway, COI is not really a reason for deletion, but lack of notability is. Do you suggest tagging this with {{Notability}}, prodding it, or bringing it to AfD? -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:10, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
I would suggest tagging it with {{Notability}}. It seems that at least some of its courses are accredited, even if it doesn't have institutional-level accreditation. It could also have significant coverage in the Chennai press that might not be available online, so it would be good to give editors who know where to find references a chance to establish notability. Robminchin (talk) 22:52, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

How to describe institutions previously accredited by ACICS

A few months ago, the U.S. Department of Education stripped recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), a national accreditor that focused on for-profit institutions in the U.S. The accreditor has sued the federal government to retain this recognition but as of right now the government's decision stands. The 245 institutions that were previously accredited by ACICS have all received approval from the Department of Education to continue receiving federal financial aid for up to 18 months while they seek a new accreditor.

The question on the table: How do we describe the accreditation status of these institutions? One editor has begun changing the articles of the affected institutions to describe them as "unaccredited." I'm not sure that is entirely accurate as that is how we describe institutions that are not accredited at all, usually because they are diploma mills or scams that have never been accredited or in a few rare instances because they have ideological objections to the process of accreditation. Since in most cases "unaccredited" is shorthand for "scam" my primary worry is that simply saying "unaccredited" paints many of these institutions with a broad brush that is the wrong color.

Should we say that these institutions were previously accredited by ACICS and are now seeking a new accreditor without actually saying that they're "unaccredited?" Are they "provisionally accredited" right now (personally, I lean away from this option because it sounds too technical and I think it's actually language used by some accreditors for institutions that are in the process of applying)? Are there other options or considerations? I haven't yet found any good language in other reliable sources but I imagine there is some out there for someone else who has some more time to look!

There are 245 institutions that are affected by this so I really think we should figure out a consistent approach for all of the articles affected by this issue. Feel free to drop notices to this discussion in the appropriate places or expand to this to an RfC or something similar. ElKevbo (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


The term "provisionally accredited" is not too technical to me. It is accurate in describing the 18-month transition period and the steps they are undergoing to apply for a new accreditor.

Although it may appear harsh to suggest that ACICS schools could be diploma mills, previous cases indicate that ACICS has been an unreliable accreditor for a long time. ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges are notable schools that collapsed under ACICS accreditation. Refer to Herguan University, which was accredited by ACICS even after its former president was jailed for one year due to student visa fraud. Northwestern Polytechnic University and Silicon Valley University have been reported by BuzzFeed to be operating "upmarket" visa mills and abusing tax laws to make more profit.

Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mollyhensleyclancy/inside-the-school-that-abolished-the-f-and-raked-in-the-cash

In California, ACICS schools are encouraged to apply for full approval to operate in the state by using the "application for non-accredited institutions". Does this suggest that they are currently unaccredited?

Source: http://www.bppe.ca.gov/schools/acics_ltr.pdf Bcf1291 (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I think "provisionally accredited" fairly accurately describes that they are recognised by the Dept of Ed for a limited period but that it is uncertain whether they will remain accredited beyond that period, it's certainly preferable to either "unaccredited" or plain "accredited", both of which are potentially misleading. They are technically receiving funding under "provisional Program Participation Agreements" (according to the Inside Higher Ed article), so a more technically accurate, but much more long-winded, description (possibly suitable for the main body text, but not infoboxes) might be "Previously accredited by ACICS and approved to receive Department of Education funding under a provisional Program Participation Agreement for 18 months from December 12, 2016 while seeking a new accreditor, following the final decision on that date to terminate the Department of Education's recognition of ACICS as an accrediting agency." (with citation of Inside Higher Ed article). Robminchin (talk) 18:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
I would oppose "provisionally accredited". This often (always?) means an institution is in the process of applying for or receiving accreditation from a particular accreditor. In this case, it's exactly the opposite. If the institution is "provisionally accredited", it must be provisionally accredited by someone. The ACICS, as I understand it, no longer has the ability to accredit anyone – provisionally or otherwise – according to the federal government. Now, if we can cite that the particular institution is, in fact, seeking new accreditation and is in provisional status from another accreditor, then it would be fine to state that.
I understand the desire to explain the situation concisely, but this is a complex issue. It is also a temporary one. I think that should give us a bit of license to use a longer explanation in the lead in the interest of accuracy and fairness, knowing that we can shorten that description once the 18 month grace period is over and the institution's accreditation status reverts to a more traditional situation – for good or for ill. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 20:18, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

An institution is "provisionally accredited" by the Department of Education. I agree that some schools have not applied for a new accreditor. However, other schools state which new accreditor they are applying to, so the term is then accurate. The lead should be longer to explain the temporary situation fully. Bcf1291 (talk) 00:55, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

RM

Your project banner is present, so you are all invited to join the discussion at Talk:Aleksandër Moisiu University#Requested move 30 April 2017.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  13:49, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Department of Management Studies, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad

I'm not sure what the notability guideline for academic departments is, but there are no independent sources cited for Department of Management Studies, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad. Are articles for individual departments typically allowed simply because the department can be shown to exist? -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:45, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

If it is simply a department/faculty of a university and shows no independent notability (it has no independent sources at the moment) then I would nominate for deletion. I'm not familiar with the Indian Institutes so it is worth checking if it has degree awarding powers itself. Aloneinthewild (talk) 20:36, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Removing comma from name of University of California San Diego

Sometime in early 2016, the University of California, San Diego officially changed its name[16] to "University of California San Diego" (the only such naming convention in the UC system), and recent press and secondary sources have begun to reflect this change. (About 70% of recent coverage, via my estimates from [17]) When will it be appropriate to begin changing every reference to the former name to the latter one? Similarly, when should the article be moved? TritonsRising (talk) 09:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

If you would care to start doing it, that would be helpful. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Coats of arms of UK universities

University of Oxford and University of Cambridge just have their coats of arms in the infobox with no further comment. But Bournemouth University and lots of other institutions rather less ancient than Oxbridge wish us to know about their coat of arms. I would like to get some consistency on this. It is potentially interesting to read a brief description of what the coat of arms is meant to represent, but I have little sympathy for attempts to use it to coat-rack marketing-department spiel into the articles. I would be particularly interested in hearing views from outside the UK. Would you like to see the coat of arms mentioned, and if so, in what section? Itsmejudith (talk) 11:09, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Unless the coat of arms has been discussed in third-party sources, it isn't really doesn't merit its own subheading. For me, the most appropriate location for details on the coat of arms would be in the "Summary" section for the file itself, not in the article, other than a passing mention, say, if the coat of arms contains a reference to an event mentioned in the school's history (i.e. "this is referenced in the school's coat of arms..." type of thing) or a sentence when the current logo/seal/coat of arms was created. U.S. universities generally have school seals that often have similar symbolism, but discussions on those or even the athletic logos don't seem appropriate for the article on the school. Reading the coat of arms section for Bournemouth, to me, that seems like it would be more appropriate in the "Summary" section of the actual image file previously mentioned. --JonRidinger (talk) 12:23, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
This is what I at File:Kent State seal.svg (seal of Kent State University in the US), using the "further details" parameter. --JonRidinger (talk) 12:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
In many cases, it would fit into the history section - particularly as the coat of arms will often reference predecessor institutions or regional history. Cardiff's, for example, references an 11th century prince of Morgannwg and that the current university was formed from the second and fifth 'children' of the University of Wales (this actually appears in an "Insignia and other representations" section on the page). What's been done for Bournemouth looks fine to me, this is encyclopedic information about what the arms signify rather than about the image, so doesn't really fit in the image summary.
There's no need for them to be mentioned in third-party sources - notability applies to the subject of articles, not to content within articles - but the description does need to be unbiased (so, as you mention, avoiding marketing spiel).
Robminchin (talk) 18:00, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Third-party sources would be needed to justify a larger, stand-alone section that doesn't violate WP:UNDUE in addition to the promotional language concerns. Didn't mean to imply I think third-party sources are required to mention it at all. No reason the basic symbolism of the coat of arms or seal can't be included in the image description either. Template:Non-free use rationale logo includes an optional description parameter that "Specifies additional details that are to be appended to the logo description." If it's important enough to be mentioned in the article on the school, it is certainly important enough to be mentioned in the description of the actual file. --JonRidinger (talk) 20:25, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
What I was trying to say is that the symbolism is not limited to the image used as it is associated with the coat of arms rather than their specific representation in that image, so discussion in the article is more appropriate than in the image summary – arms differ here from a logo, which, by its nature, can only be represented one way. That doesn't mean the symbolism can't also be mentioned in the image summary, but this shouldn't be at the expense of putting it in the article. It's also worth noting that there is never a non-free use rationale for a genuine coat of arms as it is always possible (at least in principle) to create a free image from the blazon. Robminchin (talk) 23:21, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Many thanks, both. I will start checking through UK universities to ensure that such information isn't overdone, and will usually put it in the History section. I don't usually edit picture files. I would probably be able to put the information in there but if anyone else feels strongly about it they would need to act on it themselves. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

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Are brochures from partner universities reliable sources?

Hi, there has been a general discussion in Sciences Po about universities relating reputation of their partners as a source, in this article about saying that SP is a leading or influential institution, even though no other source is saying so and ranking tend to show the opposite. Are brochures from partners universities reliable sources? --Launebee (talk) 16:51, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Brochures from partners have an obvious potential conflict of interest. This doesn't mean they are unreliable, but the reader should be informed of the connection (WP:THIRD PARTY). However, it isn't the case here that no other sources is saying things similar to this, so using those sources is probably not necessary.
For other editors here – there is an active discussion at Talk:Sciences Po about the lead for that article. This reached a general consensus that some form of statement about its status should be in the lead. The original had referred to the university as "prestigious", a revised version "leading". While I opposed the inclusion of the statement, I am now trying to work with the other editors there to come up with a more neutral wording than "leading". There are a number of independent, reliable news sources using "elite" or "prestigious" or "leading", and various other universities refer to Sciences Po as "leading". Robminchin (talk) 19:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Reputation in the lead

I open a broader discussion on wether reputation should be mentioned in the lead of university pages. My opinion is that it should not be mentioned at all, because it is too subjective, "reputation" is hardly an precise data.

Robminchin, you seem to be in favor of the inclusion. In the Panthéon-Assas University case, a lot of sources are mentioning the fact it has a reputation of "excellence", it is the word used[1][2][3][4]. And these are news articles, I am not even mentioning the partners brochures. I would be in favor of removing any mention of reputation in the lead of all university articles. But if we decide it is not the standard, how would you phrase it there? Would you keep this word, that is the one associated to this university in France according to sources? --Launebee (talk) 09:11, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Portrait de fac : l'université Paris 2 – Panthéon-Assas". Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  2. ^ "Université Paris 2 : fondés ou pas, les clichés sur Assas ?". Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  3. ^ "Rencontre avec 4 universités d'excellence - Monde des grandes écoles et des universités". 22 February 2012. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  4. ^ "Paris 2-Assas : trois parcours pour la licence de droit". Retrieved 26 December 2016.

ElKevbo I agree with you about the Oxford page, I don’t think such a statement should be in the lead. And if reputation were to be mentioned at all, "prestigious" is not even a reputation, it should not be in any article, it should say it is reputed for what. --Launebee (talk) 09:23, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, I have no blanket objection to the inclusion of "prestigious" in the lead of any article if there are sufficient sources supporting the assertion. The problem is that many of the statements are much stronger than the sources can support (e.g., the current phrase in Columbia University and University of Oxford), an outright misstatement of what the sources actually say, or clear instances of synthesis of many unrelated sources. This all explains why I think the statement used in Harvard University is a good example of how to go about this since it has very strong sources that very directly support the statement in the article. ElKevbo (talk) 12:16, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Launebee, I'm not generally in favour of including reputational statements in the lead. They are always, by definition, opinion rather than fact - I would prefer to state facts and let the reader draw their own conclusions as to whether an institution is highly regarded or not. For Oxford, for instance, something factual like "the University of Oxford was ranked in the top five globally for reputation in a 2016 survey of academics by THE" would be vastly preferable, and in keeping with the general guideline that we state facts about opinions rather than stating opinions as facts. A non-neutral statement such as Oxford's, Columbia's and Harvard's - where an opinion is stated as a fact - raises at least a yellow flag for me that the consensus editing on that article is likely to be non-neutral. (In Columbia's case, where the editors have sought to build the impression of greater support by including multiple articles about the THE ranking, it's a red flag.) However, where it is clear that the consensus among editors is to include a statement despite this, I am willing to work on a neutral statement rather than pointlessly opposing the consensus.

Robminchin (talk) 23:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Ranking and alumni in the lead

Hi, is there a rule regarding the inclusion of a ranking in the lead? In Sciences Po page, people agree on putting only the ranking of its best ranking, but in Panthéon-Assas University, Mr rnddude has reviewed the article, and the only thing he was still wondering about regarding neutrality, it seems, is the ranking in the lead: it is the ranking of Eduniversal, the only ranking for law and business in France not based on English-speaking research. Are these choice of inclusion of ranking in the lead against some rule? --Launebee (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

I think we had a discussion on this in the past year, maybe check the archive. I think if rankings are going to be included in the lead then they should be balanced, comparing the range of rankings the institution may have received. For example QS ranks Sciences Po as 220th globally (2017), that doesn't impact its reputation because it is clearly a specialist in social sciences, but it probably should be mentioned. Equally, the Times (THE) ranked it 98th for Social Sciences (2014) which is quite a difference compared to the QS figure. So I think there is probably some cherry-picking of the best figures going on. Aloneinthewild (talk) 18:45, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
As Aloneinthewild mentioned, there was a recent RfC on what rankings (if any) should be put in the lead, which can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Archive 9#RfC: University rankings in lede. This had the outcome

There is a consensus for university rankings to be mentioned in the lede on university articles as the individual editor sees fit. If there is a dispute between two or more editors as to whether or not they see fit in any single article, it can be resolved through consensus or, if necessary, RfC, within the Talk page of that specific article. At the present time there is no consensus to impose a blanket style mandate.

However, the freedom of editors to decide what is warranted in an article does not mean they can override the basic rules of Wikipedia. One of these is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view - "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". Cherry-picking the best ranking to put in the lead would fail to meet this rule.
Thus (by my interpretation) the Science Po editors could decide to put the global rankings for Social Sciences in the lead, as being relevant to the particular institution, but it doesn't mean they could then pick which Social Sciences rankings are put there. They can chose to emphasise a particular field for which the institute is known, but this must be done in a way that makes it clear that this is what they are doing. The London School of Economics article, for example, has: "LSE is second in the world for social sciences in the QS Rankings closely trailing Harvard University, ranked in the top twenty in the THE Rankings, and in the top fifty by all four major global rankings." This makes mention of a number of different rankings, making it clear that although the QS ranking is high other rankings place the institution lower. Something similar for Science Po might state that "Science Po was ranked 62nd in the world for social sciences in 2017 by the QS rankings but outside of the top 100 by the Times Higher Education rankings, and is not included in the top 200 by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. It is particularly known for politics and international studies, where it was ranked fourth in the QS World University Subjects Rankings 2017." This would keep some of the current detail in, while making it clear that the subject ranking is being included specifically as a field the institution excells in, but would add the overall social sciences rankings. The slight difference in wording for THE and ARWU is because Science Po did appear in THE (98th in social sciences) in 2014 and so is definitely included, while it has never appeared (as far as I can tell) in the ARWU so it isn't possible to tell if it is ranked below 200 (anything is possible with ARWU, which uses somewhat bizarre metrics and makes no correction for size) or if they simply failed to include it. Robminchin (talk) 23:18, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
@Robminchin: Thanks for that! I am wondering if what Anne Delong proposed in the RfC you mentionned the best solution: nothing about ranking. You see people disagree too much on this. But it would have to include nothing about reputation and alumni too to be coherent. I guess we could make a new RfC to establish it as a rule? ::The thing is in Science Po article, the sentence they want to put about "leading institution" is simply false, so even in the article it would not be acceptable, the problem there is partially somehow different then.
--Launebee (talk) 08:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
  • IMO rankings and alumni should not in general be in the lead.
  • Rankings: There are too many rankings, which are always in flux. General rankings aren't even useful to prospective students, but are used only to bolster prestige of the institution and its graduates. What use is it to know that a university is ranked #2 in a country if it doesn't offer the program I need in the language I speak? If one or more of the university's programs or institutes is the subject of multiple, substantial, independent published reports which make a point of mentioning the ranking, then maybe something that wouldn't be outdated, such as "its freshwater biology program ranks consistently among the top three in Canada" would be acceptable.
  • Alumni: A university is not necessarily responsible for a notable graduate's fame. Mentioning famous graduates in the lead is a form of name-dropping, like "George Washington slept here". Exceptions: If a student engaged in notable activities while at the institution or later as a direct result of attendance there, if multiple, independent published sources agree about the importance of the university's role, and if there is at least one paragraph about the person's activities related to the university that can then be summarized in the lead, then fine.—Anne Delong (talk) 12:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree that very rarely if at all should rankings be mentioned in the lead. I haven't seen any attempt to include alumni in the lead, and it would not usually be appropriate. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
On a quick semi-random survey of university articles for major international universities (Virginia, Cornell, Oxford, Cambridge, Bonn, Sydney), they all include alumni accomplishments in the lead (number of Nobel prize winners, statespersons, etc.). This looks to be clearly established as the consensus position across multiple different universities. I also don't see how removing rankings from the lead would necessitate also removing alumni information.
The consensus on rankings from the recent RfC was that they are permitted in the lead generally, although this is obviously subject to the usual rules on NPOV. Robminchin (talk) 19:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Personnally, I totally agree with the reasoning of Anne Delong, the rule + exception she’s proposing. Famous alumni are not facts about the university, it’s facts about these people. We could even discuss removing that from the articles, but in the lead it seems very bizarre in the end because it does not define the university at all (except the cases Anne Delong mentioned). --Launebee (talk) 22:52, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
From the change you have made to the title of this discussion, it seems that you are putting rankings, (statements about) reputation, and alumni in the same category. This is an error. Rankings are opinions based on analysis of data, statements about reputation are (possibly informed) opinions, but which alumni attended the institution is a fact. That you put them together implies that you think alumni are listed as an indicator of reputation or prestige. A similar argument could, however, be made for statements about when the institution was founded (age being an indicator of prestige) and about which associations it is a member of (being part of the Ivy League or the Russell Group, for example, are indicators of prestige). However, all of these are allowed to stay because they are facts, not opinions. To quote WP:PRESTIGE: "Allow the facts to speak for themselves and let the reader decide." (emphasis in original). That is why putting "x alumni of N have won Nobel prizes and y have been heads of state" is a completely different category from "N is one of the leading institutions" or from "N is ranked #1 in Europe by QS".
It is necessary, if the facts are to speak for themselves and the reader is to be allowed to decide, that the reader is given the facts. The reader may decide that the alumni accomplishments say something about the education offered, or about the sort of people that attend that institution, or about the unfairness of society. The point is that it is up to them to decide. That, then, brings us to the problem with Anne Delong's suggestion. It puts the onus on the editor to decide which alumni are famous "as a direct result of attendance there". That is moving from the realm of fact to the realm of opinion - the decision should be for the reader, not the editor.
As to whether a summary of alumni accomplishments should be in the lead, I think the decision of the recent RfC on rankings is indicative. While alumni are not the same as rankings, it seems implausible that it would be okay to include opinions (rankings) but not facts (alumni) in the lead. Robminchin (talk) 02:45, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Addendum: WP:PRESTIGE actually recommends that one way to improve university articles without falling foul of boosterism is to "Review the Alumni Association's website to include additional notable alumni". This is a clear endorsement of the inclusion of alumni. Robminchin (talk) 03:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
I hope you don’t mind the change of title, it did not say that it is the same thing, but it was to reflect the content of our discussions. I separated but it was reversed.
Indeed, but facts have to be presented in a neutral way. To me, clearly, alumni are not significative enough about a university to be put in the lead, and it implies that the university is defined by its alumni, which is false, as Anne Delong says.
Regarding the content of the article, the WP rules cannot be changed?
--Launebee (talk) 08:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that alumni achievements are a significant indicator of the influence of the university on society: see, for example, the discussion a few months back on the influence of the Oxford PPE degree on how the UK is run.[18] No single factor defines a university, but alumni are certainly among the important factors and deserve mentioning in the lead along with the various other important factors. Regarding the content guidelines, certainly they can be changed but as there are literally hundreds of articles based on them this is not something to be done lightly and which is likely to encounter significant opposition. Robminchin (talk) 13:55, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
It would be hard for a balanced article on the University of Oxford not to feature prominently the fact that it has educated 27 of the 54 UK Prime Ministers, including 10 of the 13 post-war Prime Ministers. This seems less controversial to me that the inclusion of ranking data, and both are much better than the current dreadful sentence "It is one of the world's most prestigious universities.[12][13][14]". Jonathan A Jones (talk) 14:25, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Regarding Oxford, it would come in the exception rule of Anne Delong. There is a so important link, assessed by so many independent research, that it can be in the lead. But it is more this that should be mentioned rather than the names of the alumni. In the SP article, they want to put original research regarding the alummni, that’s different I think. --Launebee (talk) 19:43, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
I am not against alumni being mentioned in the lead; it's just that the lead is supposed to be a summary of information in the article. The sentence about Prime Ministers and Oxford is a summary; mentioning each of the Prime Ministers in the lead would not be. If a particular alumnus is mentioned in the lead, it should be because there is considerable information connecting him or her to the university in the body of the article to be summarized.—Anne Delong (talk) 20:48, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
I would agree with this – anything in the lead should be a summary of what is given in the body of the article, and mentioning individual alumni would certainly require a strong link. If text (about alumni or anything else) is OR, this is obviously a problem and it shouldn't ​be on the article, let alone in the lead. Robminchin (talk) 23:00, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Ok, that makes sense (even though I would tend to think otherwise). --Launebee (talk) 10:10, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
The problem with the text in the current Oxford article ("It is one of the world's most prestigious universities.") is not the text itself but the dreadful sourcing. I gave up trying to work with the editor(s) that is insisting on inserting that statement because he or she doesn't seem to understand what I've been trying to say. The statement itself is extremely strong but that's perfectly fine if it's supported by equally strong sources. In this case, it's just supported by three contemporary (2016) rating systems which are fine sources by themselves but wholly inadequate for such a sweeping statement. ElKevbo (talk) 21:46, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I think the lists of alumni in nearly all college and university articles are problematic in that they're lists that are either composed by individual Wikipedia editors (i.e., WP:SYN) or taken primarily from sources that have an inherent conflict of interest in promoting the institution (e.g., employees that work at the institution itself to promote it, alumni association). Rarely do I see independent secondary or tertiary sources that discuss the alumni of an institution. And this problem is so pervasive that I have no hope of us being able to address especially since so many articles are edited and watched by alumni, staff, and others with inherent conflicts-of-interest.

(Incidentally, this is the exact same problem that I have with the "In popular culture" section of most of these articles, too: They're a Wikipedia-editor selected list of examples with no independent secondary or tertiary sources that discuss the institution's role in or influence on popular culture. Textbook synthesis whose inclusion is often supported primarily by alumni and other COI editors.) ElKevbo (talk) 21:55, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how a list drawing from multiple sources is WP:SYN unless it the editor is drawing a new conclusion that isn't in the sources. As it says in WP:SYNNOT, "SYNTH is original research by synthesis, not synthesis per se." I don't see a list of alumni as drawing a new conclusion, just as saying "all of these people went to this institution".
With the WP:PRESTIGE article actually promoting using the alumni association as a source for alumni, this would certainly seem to be acceptable - and as long as the information reproduced is factual (i.e. the alumni association isn't claiming alumni that never attended) I don't see a problem with this. The reason for using third-party sources is to reduce bias; for reproducing purely factual data about a source even self-published sources are acceptable (WP:USESPS). Robminchin (talk) 23:10, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
The problem is that these lists are almost always created by cherry picking information to lead readers to a conclusion about the transformative power of the institution in shaping the lives of its students. In reality many of the talented, driven, and wealthy people that are included in these lists of alumni would be successful no matter what - if any - college or university they had attended. But we'll never know that if we either focus primarily or exclusively on POV materials produced by the institution or if we cherry pick our own examples.
And let's be clear that we're talking only about lists of alumni included in the lead of an article or in a particular section when those lists are being used to make an implicit or explicit argument. I have no objection when small lists are constructed as representative examples of a larger sets especially when those larger sets are elsewhere in Wikipedia e.g., lists of alumni, alumni categories. ElKevbo (talk) 12:24, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
It is clear that these aren't all alumni, but the most notable ones, and readers know that. It is up to the reader whether they believe it's the transformative power of the university or if they think that people who would have been successful anyway have chosen to attend it. Putting the facts of "these are notable people who attended this institution" before the reader and allowing them to draw their own conclusion is not WP:SYNTH.
Selecting for notability is not cherry-picking, it's what Wikipedia does. WP:UNIGUIDE recommends that "For very old, very large, or very prestigious schools it may be more appropriate to use categories ("Alumni of", "Faculty of", etc.) instead, limiting the explicit list to very well-known persons (heads of state, historical figures, etc.) and adding a narrative summary of statistics on such things as Nobel Prizes, other prestigious awards, and so on." (emphasis added). Nobody is going to list all alumni from a university, and if they did the non-notable entries would be removed as per WP:LISTBIO: "For instance, articles about schools often include (or link to) a list of notable alumni/alumnae, but such lists are not intended to contain everyone who attended the school — only those with verifiable notability." This means that Wikipedia will never contain a representative sample of alumni, so your criteria can never be met.
I also don't see any problem with verifying attendance at the university from material produced by the institution. Whether someone attended or not is not an opinion, so isn't affected by any spin or bias. Such material probably shouldn't be counted as third-party coverage for the purposes of establishing notability, however, but if it's verifying that someone with their own Wikipedia article (and thus already established as notable) attended the institution I don't see a problem. These sources are perfectly good for verifying facts and this is, as I pointed out above, both in accordance with WP:USESPS and actively encouraged by WP:PRESTIGE. A far bigger problems is that many alumni lists are not well sourced. Robminchin (talk) 16:30, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Prestige is not quite the same as notability... for neutral point of view we'd have to be sure to include noted serial killers, jewel thieves, war criminals, embezzlers, fraudsters, spies, terrorists....—Anne Delong (talk) 17:34, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, if they are notable and it is verified that they attended, they should go in, and the evidence from some famous examples is that they do: List of University of Cambridge people has a sub-section on Soviet spies, List of people associated with the London School of Economics includes Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, List of Hofstra University alumni has Bernie Madoff and Oxford, of course, still has statues up to Cecil Rhodes. Robminchin (talk) 18:59, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent events at Southeastern Bible College

Could some experts keep an eye on Southeastern Bible College (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)? It appears to have been closed (noisily?) recently and has been receiving edits of dubious quality. Please ping me if you need me. Thanks, d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 02:26, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Fashion Careers College

The article Fashion Careers College has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

reads more like an advertisement and also is heavily dependent on one source

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. BSOleader (talk) 14:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

List of universities in Sri Lanka

There's a content dispute on List of universities in Sri Lanka in regard to the scope of the article. Until recently the article contained all degree awarding bodies irrespective of whether they had "university" in their name or not. Now it only contains bodies with "university" in their name. There's a discussion on this here. Your comments are welcome.--Obi2canibe (talk) 12:18, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Fashion Careers College

The article Fashion Careers College has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

reads more like an advertisement and also is heavily dependent on one source. THIS NOTICE MUST NOT BE REMOVED.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. BSOleader (talk) 14:22, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

You have previously proposed that article for deletion and the proposal was disputed (by me). The template explicitly says that "If this template is removed, do not replace it" so please nominate the article for deletion if you still believe it should be deleted and do not propose it for deletion again. ElKevbo (talk) 15:18, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Help with Full Sail University edit request

Hello, WikiProject Universities participants. On behalf of my employer, Full Sail University, I have proposed some improvements to the Wikipedia article. More specifically, I have suggested 4 changes to the article's introduction, which you can see here. My financial conflict of interest prevents me from making any edits myself. Any suggestions and feedback are welcome. Tylergarner (talk) 21:45, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Ian Gordon (historian)

Would someone from this WikiProject mind taking a look at Ian Gordon (historian) and see if he meets WP:PROF or WP:BIO? The sources given in the article do not seem to indicate he does, but he might be more notable as an author than a professor due to his books on comicbooks and popular culture. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:53, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Certainly doesn't meet WP:PROF and not at all clear he meets WP:AUTHOR. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 12:48, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree. I doubt the article would survive AfD and perhaps even a prod. ElKevbo (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
I see little evidence of notability under any of the guidelines. The only citations are to his CV (which cannot be used to establish notability, but in this case doesn't offer any evidence that there are missing source that could be used) and two reviews of his book in the specialist press, which appear to have been selectively quoted in the manner of a book blurb rather than summarised in a proper encyclopedic manner. An earlier reference, now deleted, gave a link to the catalogue of Michigan State University that held seven of his works – this is available on archive.org [19] but doesn't do anything to establish notability (academics are not notable just for publishing).
There is thus no evidence offered to support the academic influence needed for WP:PROF nor the creative importance for WP:AUTHOR. There is also no evidence of coverage of either his work or his publications in general news media, which might begin to establish notability under the general WP:NOTABILITY guidelines. The article has, however, existed for almost a decade (created 8 February 2008) so should probably go through WP:AFD rather than WP:PROD. Robminchin (talk) 16:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
@Jonathan A Jones, ElKevbo, and Robminchin: Thanks to you all for taking a look at the article. Do any of you think the article can be saved? I tried a basic Google search for more sources using the keywords "Ian Gordon Comic Books", and found what looks like his official homepage for the University of Singapore as well as some book listings/reviews, but not sure if those are sufficient for his Wikipedia notability. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:08, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Should we say that Warren National University was a diploma mill?

Hello! You are invited to participate in Talk:Warren National University#RfC: Should we say that Warren National University was a diploma mill? (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:22, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Is there any desire here to cleanup nav templates at Category:United States universities and colleges by state navigational boxes so they comply with WP:NAVBOX "Each link should clearly be identifiable as such to our readers. In general, text colors should be consistent with Wikipedia text color defaults, so links should be blue; " Not sure how hiding the main links with white text helps navigation. We also sure its best to have colour by numbers looking templates for this academic topic.--Moxy (talk) 16:27, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I think the relevant part is the next sentence of that guideline, "However, specific navbox guidelines for color of text and background other than the defaults are available. (MOS:NAVBOXCOLOR)". It would be better to not have hidden links in the groups though, as seen for the Oxford template, I can agree with you there. I have no problem with the colours, "Colors that are useful for identification and are appropriate, representative, and accessible may be used with discretion." Editors of these templates have clearly chosen colours that the university/colleges are identified by. Aloneinthewild (talk) 13:53, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Controversy sections of Australian universities

Hi all, there seems to be a lot of editing at Australian university pages regarding sexual assault statistics reported in the mass media, over recent days. Could I ask other editors to look and see if these violate WP:NOTNEWS as I feel they might. Aloneinthewild (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Grand Valley State University#requestedit

Hello. There is a conflict of interest edit request at the Grand Valley State University talk page waiting review. I am not inclined to take this request, so I'd like to ask if there's an interested member of the WikiProject to handle the request. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 21:47, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

And another request over at Talk:Princeton University Press. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 21:50, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Johnny Morris

This UK children's TV presenter is listed as a being an alumunus of Drury University.

I'm sure that this is wrong man. Johnny Morris was born into a working class Welsh family during WWI, and spent most of his adult life working in the U.K. as a zookeeper, children's T.V. presenter and voiceover artist. I cannot see when he would've gone to Drury. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:F036:8F01:3942:9729:8F5D:D12C (talk) 13:20, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

There's a Drury "notable alumnus" called John Morris (businessman) who seems to have been added as an unlinked "Johnny Morris" but then carelessly linked in Sept 2013 to our long-established Johnny Morris! An IP Drury enthusiast then added the alumni category to his article in Nov 2014. If people would think/check before editing, neither of those would have happened (no mention of his academic career at Drury in his article, which should have given pause for thought!). I've removed the category. PamD 14:18, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
And the alumnus's link was corrected in Jan 2015, at the time when his article was created. PamD 14:22, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
For good measure I've now added the alumnus, John Morris (businessman), to Johnny Morris (disambiguation), with a note on the talk page to say why (his article doesn't mention "Johnny"). PamD 14:29, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
OK, a bit more of the story: the IP editor who added "Johnny Morris, founder and owner of Bass Pro Shops" as an alumnus of Drury University in Oct 2008 obviously checked his/her links carefully, because one minute later they unlinked him (having presumably spotted that the link was going to the wrong JM!). Good editing there (OK, using "Preview changes" would have been even better, but at least they checked after hitting "Save"!). It stayed there unlinked, as far as I know, for the next five years ttill one careless editor intervened, followed by another. PamD 14:51, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Please comment – Notre Dame seal

Hello. There is a debate over which seal to use for the University of Notre Dame and your assistance is requested. Please comment at Talk:University of Notre Dame#RFC: Use of the university seal. Thanks, Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 00:25, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Religious affiliation in infobox for Catholic Universities

In the infobox, the affiliation of some universities is listed as 'Roman Catholic Church', which redirects to Catholic Church. This redirect seems to be redundant. Why not eliminate the redirect an insert the link to the WP of the Catholic Church? Eccekevin (talk) 07:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

"ranked as one of the best"

I see this potentially misleading phrase in several ledes, and it may be rampant. I think we will need to look at each RS, double-check them, and possibly rephrase them. This is a lot of work.Zigzig20s (talk) 11:55, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Template:PopularCultureUniversities - check for original research

Would anyone mind checking the articles listed in Template:PopularCultureUniversities for any Wikipedia:Synthesis or Wikipedia:Original research? It'll be important to remove fancrufty/OR stuff.

Be sure to personally contact the authors of the sections (even if they made the edits months/years ago) and tell them not only how/why their edits were problematic, but how they can properly build such a section (with reliable sources). You may have to do some hand-holding if the users are still active. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:48, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Having been alerted to this template's existence I've added links to three lists of fictional colleges (to which the above comments about OR etc might apply) and it's reminded me to continue work on User:PamD/sandbox/List of fictional English universities - contributions and references welcome! PamD 14:33, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure why this template exists. Is it actually used anywhere? I suspect it's not because it's woefully out of date with many of the entries having been deleted or merged years ago. Time to send it to an deletion discussion (not that that would address the issues already raised about the content in the articles/lists that actually exist)? ElKevbo (talk) 16:30, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Based on Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PopularCultureUniversities it is in use WhisperToMe (talk) 19:40, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Additional help requested at Trinity College (Connecticut)

Can some other editors please take a look at Trinity College (Connecticut) and its Talk page? A few editors are having some disagreements and other voices would be helpful. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 16:11, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Self-published content

I've noticed some articles about universities have self-published content (where they use the university website as references). While this is OK for basic information like how many books the library collections have, it can quickly turn into WP:PEACOCK. Do we know how widespread of a problem this is please? It may take us a while to replace those references with RS from third-party books or Newspapers.com, but perhaps a worthwhile project for this WP to focus on?Zigzig20s (talk) 22:12, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red November contest open to all


Announcing Women in Red's November 2017 prize-winning world contest

Contest details: create biographical articles for women of any country or occupation in the world: November 2017 WiR Contest

Read more about how Women in Red is overcoming the gender gap: WikiProject Women in Red

(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 07:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Change to residential college infobox

I've proposed a tweak to this infobox at Template_talk:Infobox_residential_college#Position of university name. TSP (talk) 14:55, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

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