Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education

Notability of faculties/academic colleges

I've noticed time and time again that university articles are being split off into separate articles for each faculty or academic college. What do we think about this? Do they each need to satisfy general notability guidelines or are they notable at major universities? Some examples are:

• Kennesaw State University College of Science & Mathematics
• Camberwell College of Arts
• College of Arts and Sciences (University of Nebraska–Lincoln)

etc, etc. Take a look at this search —Noetic Sage 03:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I am fine with this. To have a decent university article you need to split off the colleges, especially if there are a lot with encyclopedic information. Notability could be established on their own, or as part of a larger university. They are at a minimum as notable as a high school, which are assumed to be notable. KnightLago (talk) 04:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree as you seem to be saying that all departments or faculties are notable. I certainly agree that many of them are notable but I do not accept a blanket assertion that they are all notable. If I recall the last time we had this conversation, the general consensus was that each case should be judged on its own merits so if a particular department or faculty is notable enough and sufficient sources exist to create a separate article then that's the way to do. --ElKevbo (talk) 05:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I think they need to be colleges, not simply a small department. I am fine with the previous consensus also. KnightLago (talk) 15:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

University colleges/faculties that are independently notable may have their own article, otherwise, it may be wise to just fork the colleges into a "X University Academics" article instead. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 02:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

There is an immense difference between a department and a faculty. By "faculty" we mean the first order academic divisions, often called "Colleges" in the US and sometimes "Schools"--the terms are usually interchangeably, but some places use them idiosyncratically. At a major university, such as a US flagship state university, I would expect that most of these are notable. I would expect that almost any separate medical or law school/faculty/college would be notable. the question comes at a/smaller units--business schools often, but what about a small school of say Podiatric Medicine? and b/smaller and less notable universities. I think for those judgment is needed.

As for Departments, I think the rule goes as "undeniably world-class" and that actual sources have to be demonstrated saying something of the sort. It's one of my medium priorities--I have about a dozen such departments in mind which I know about where i know there are good sources to that effect, & I intend to try them. It's a question of putting in the necessary work. I'll list them here when I do them so people can attack them at pleasure if they disagree. (but again its the essence, not the nomenclature--something can be called a department and really be a college in the sense I use above)

for the traditional european university, its harder, because the organization is usually flatter, and there is often no separation between the two. DGG (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

See, the problem here is that many US universities have departments AND colleges, such as having Civil Engineering Department, Chemical Engineering Department, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department grouped together as part of the "College of Engineering". We really need to straighten things out with the naming, which I thought was settle already last year, but I guess it's resurfacing again? - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 20:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

You'll never get the language "straightened out." This is not a Wikipedia issue. :) --ElKevbo (talk) 21:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

but to the extent there is any pattern, the departments of X-engineering would not normally have articles, the College of Engineering would. An interesting example of the sort of problem that arises is University of California Berkeley, where there is a UC Berkeley College of Chemistry with departments of chem, chem engineering, and chemical biology -- in contrast to everything else at that university and I think to any other also. The reason is the historic development, as you'll see from the extraordinary people listed there--they had enough prestige to insist on running things their own way. DGG (talk) 22:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Granted that the organizations of universities varies but tends toward a structure involving a specific knowledge domain (department of chemistry, pediatrics, etc.), an agglomeration of domains into a unit (college of science, school of medicine, etc.), and that these units are constitutive of a university. With this definition, departments should almost never have their wikipedia article barring a few overwhelmingly notable exceptions, but a university's colleges and schools almost certainly have enough notability for a separate article. Madcoverboy (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

A list of the teaching departments is necessary, either in this article or as a sub-article. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I would reiterate Jameson's argument above that almost any (accredited or otherwise legitimate) university would be entitled to have a "Academics at X University" in which all schools/colleges would be included and expanded beyond the information on the mother page. If it becomes clear that this school, college, department, faculty, etc. information would overload this academics daughter article (as I imagine would be the case for law, medical, business school) then editors would be justified in further forking the content into daughter/granddaughter pages. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Three Canadian residence halls nominated for deletion

I have nominated for deletion three articles about Canadian residence halls: Medway-Sydenham Hall, Ernescliff College, and Saugeen-Maitland Hall. Although I am interested in hearing your thoughts on these particular article, I am more interested to see if this establishes a general consensus regarding the notability of individual residence halls which do not appear to have extraordinary histories of any sort. --ElKevbo (talk) 18:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

BLP discussion of alumni

A discussion has begun at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons regarding the listing of alumni in articles. Your thoughts and opinions would be welcome in the discussion! --ElKevbo (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I've listed the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill article at peer review. Any feedback would be very much welcomed. Thanks. Artichoke2020 (talk) 03:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Duke University FAR

Duke University has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. 152.2.128.80 (talk) 01:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Satyr

Have you replaced User:SatyrTN's User:SatyrBot? We at WP:CHICAGO are looking for a replacement since he is no longer active. Please respond at my talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:46, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Student Life articles

I have merged Student Life New Zealand into Student Life (university ministry), and plan to do the same with Student Life Australia. The article they are being merged into seems to lack notability too, as I have indicated with the template, and might itself be merged into the apparently notable Campus Crusade for Christ. Nobody seems to be watching them, and they were all created by one-edit wonders, so I need some more feedback. Richard001 (talk) 03:50, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

BYU article slimming

We're trying to get this article down to a more manageable size and suggestions would be appreciated. We're getting close to what we want. Wrad (talk) 00:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the article looks much better. Any more slimming and it would start taking away crucial parts of a proper article. Great job again! :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Template usage

We've got some questions about use of the infobox template, asked at the template talk page and discussed initially here. Anyone familiar with the usage of {{Infobox_University}} is welcome to shed some light. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting this WikiProject know. :) Esrever ^(klaT) 21:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

seals and logos

Hi all! There's currently a discussion brewing over at Talk:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over the inclusion of both seals and logos in university articles. My argument is that it's not a valid fair use under the non-free content criteria because #3A calls for "minimal usage". Since seals and logos serve the same point (displaying a university-approved visual identity), I don't think it's acceptable to include both. However, I'm certainly willing to acknowledge that consensus may hold that is kosher. Any thoughts from anyone on this end? Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 16:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

University Challenge userbox

{{User:UBX/University Challenge}} {{User:UBX/University Challenge|University of Birmingham|2007}} {{User:UBX/University Challenge}}

For anyone who's interested, I've created a userbox for the long-running British quiz show University Challenge – visit {{User:UBX/University Challenge}} for instructions on how to use it. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Indiana Wesleyan University

Greetings,

An editor named "Me" has placed a tag on the IWU page, of which I am the primary editor. His reason for doing so is simply because I am affiliated with the school - not that I made any biased POV comments. The vast majority of Wikipedia contributors edit a page they are affiliated with, so I don't know where he's going with this. He even admits that I cited everything, but that he just wanted other people to know that I'm affiliated with IWU. I'm sorry, but you don't place a massive warning tag on the top of an article just because you feel like it. I've never had any problems with this page and do everything by Wiki guidelines. This guy is clearly overstepping his authority - I think he's a wanabee Wikipedia administrator. Please remove his tag and tell him not to put it back.

Thanks,

Manutdglory (talk) 19:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Flagship issue at BYU

An edit war is threatening to brew over this issue at the BYU article once again. Those who participated earlier are welcome to do it again, as well as anyone else, of course. Wrad (talk) 01:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Rankings in lead

I think that more than being extremely tacky, putting any ranking in the lead generally violates a number of WP policies as relating to WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:LEAD: (1) citing one source's rankings, usually ignoring less favorable rankings in others, (2) citing all rankings, everywhere, (3) citing out-of-date rankings since their stock has since decreased, (4) parsing the rankings to improve standing (eg, "top 10 university starting with the letter Q"), (5) and any number of other games. I have gone through and stripped WP:PEACOCK and WP:PRESTIGE from the leads of several dozen US colleges and universities as well as modified the Article Guidelines. Similarly, I removed instances of "highly selective" since this is the epitome of a weasel words.

Moreover, the leads I edited were often devoid of any other information about the school besides what its name was and where it was located. If editors want cause to put rankings in the lead, at the very VERY least, the lead should summarize the rest of the article's topics on history, campus, organization, enrollment, research, athletics, and so on first. Indeed, I concede that it will be impossible to completely excise rankings from university articles, so a reasonable compromise is just to confine them to a single exhaustive section where they're all laid out rather than selectively included. To that end, I had created Template:Infobox US university ranking a while back where US News, SJU ARWU, Times Higher Ed Supplement, Measuring University Performance, Newsweek, Washington Monthly, can all be included. If you want rankings in your article, include all the sources -- even ones where you're not ranked favorably, or at all.

Just looking for consensus on this one when editors start crying that they want to make their university's WP page back into an admissions pamphlet. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You removed a sentence from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill article that was merely a summary of the small, well-sourced rankings subsection as should be there per WP:LEAD. Moreover, that article went through peer review, GA review, and GA reassessment with the lead exactly as is, which would suggest consensus over your unilateral (though, of course, good faith) action. LostOldPassword (talk) 16:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Bobak has gone and reverted all the changes I made. I'm not going to get in a revert war, but it's apparent that these reversions were not made in WP:AGF. Madcoverboy (talk) 16:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's "apparent" at all. I think Bobak would agree with me that you first need to establish consensus on a broad, sweeping change like this. Esrever ^(klaT) 16:55, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is being invoked as a counter-argument when I see no pre-existing or explicit consensus on the issue. UC-Davis and Duke have been invoked as examples, but the majority of FAs have no mention of rankings in the lead (Cornell, Dartmouth, Florida Atlantic University, Georgetown, Michigan State, University of Michigan, Texas A&M) if we are to accept that FAs are sacrosanct and indicative of consensus. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd argue that the fact that you found "several dozen articles" with rankings in the lead seems pretty clearly to be pre-existing consensus, no? Esrever ^(klaT) 17:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:WAX: "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on what other articles do or do not exist; because there is nothing stopping anyone from creating any article." Is it consensus or just an unchecked practice? Madcoverboy (talk) 17:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Had I tried to get UCR through FA without rankings in the lead I'd have been accused of trying to "cover-up" the school's reputation. Amerique^dialectics 17:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I completely understand where you are coming from, but I find this to be a revealing strawman argument because it demonstrates the extent to which editors and readers rely upon rankings to legitimize or calibrate how they are going to read about the university. Employing rankings becomes a crutch to describe the university rather than just describing the university and placing these rankings in their appropriate and limited context later in the article. I don't imagine the leads for articles on companies describe their stock prices, performance or other rankings and statistics; a politician's article the number of votes in the last election or rankings by various institutions; a country's article its statistical rankings; and so on. Doing any of this would reek of recentism and bias. The same applies here. An obvious implication would from this argument is that if we are to include rankings at all in any article, should we not include historical rankings as well? Likewise a strawman argument, but it should frame the essential problem of having one publication's (admittedly widely-cited) yearly ranking in the lead of a university article. This is an encyclopedia, not an admissions brochure, or a syndicate for US News. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

FAU, Michigan State, and Texas A&M are all FAs without rankings in the lead that would likely fall into the same boat at UC-Davis regarding positive POV/lack of popular prestige. I'll have to go back and look at their FACs to see if this was mentioned. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) UNC was widely reviewed, so I would see that as consensus in that case, though of course that may not hold for other articles. I think all the existing guidelines cover what should be in a lead, and don't think all these articles can be grouped together and say that university articles shouldn't (or even should) have rankings in lead. It will be appropriate for some and not for others, but we definitely want variety in the leads and not a formulaic set of guidelines. If an article has gone through FA, GA, or PR and a ranking was there and passed through, then it was appropriate, and if it wasn't there, then it's omission was also appropriate, etc. etc. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:17, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

One other note, I think "highly selective" is actually a technical definition of the Carnegie Foundation (or something similarly), so it may not WP:AWW if in context and appropriately cited. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Almost right, it's more selective (and there's selective and inclusive). See Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Highly selective probably should changed to one of those and cited in the main text, I guess. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

More fuel for the fire: Among GAs on US universities and colleges (not daughter pages like history of, campus of, school of X, etc.) and excluding the service academies: 13 have no explicit mention of rankings in the lead and 8 do mention rankings in the lead. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the absence of something proves consensus either way. It just shows that articles can be good or featured with or without rankings. Since that is the case, is there any reason to change the status quo? I see no reason to remove rankings from some articles, nor add them to those in which they are absent. Evaluate each article on it's merits, because a Wikipedia with a rigid list of "do's" and "do not's" would be a very poor place to be. LostOldPassword (talk) 18:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well WP already has a lot of Do Nots since we're trying to make a coherent encyclopedia rather than a hodgepodge of webpages, so asking that there be stylistic consistency across articles is not a sea change. I merely dredge up these facts to point out the clear lack of consensus on something for which there should be a clear consensus. It's clear on what side of the coin I fall. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Some people are misconstruing that I am advocating for wholesale blanking of every mention of rankings ever on every page which is idealistic at best: the prevalence and subsequent fetishization of rankings among universities and students means that we would do our readers a disservice to not include some of this information in the article. Rather, what I am arguing based upon WP:LEAD and WP:UNI/AG, is that quality/prestige/reputation rankings have no place being mentioned in the lead of a university article: "Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading the whole article...the relative emphasis given to material in the lead should reflect its relative importance to the subject according to reliable sources." Rankings have little if any importance to the rest of the topic at hand, namely describing a university. It seems then that rankings are being used as a crutch in place of summarizing the variety of attributes that contribute to that university's "measured" quality/prestige. Likewise, if you want to mention the metrics that were used in calculating a ranking, by all means, do that or put it in an infobox. Mentioning an average SAT score or admissions rate for a given year in the lead would be summarizing the information already present in the article but it also would and should appear silly and tacky.

Indeed, wouldn't it then make more sense that if one wanted to make a claim as to the quality or prestige of a four-year university, the rankings from the past four years should also be included or averaged? Is the freshman class really better or worse than the senior class? Why are all the rankings not summarized or included in the history section as well? Why only the US News rankings - certainly ARWU and Times and CMUP all merit inclusion as well under NPOV? The answers to these questions highlight the idiocy of rankings which most people agree on. Why then privilege an idiotic measure in a lead where the limited space could be devoted to more important matters? I have rarely seen the an annual ranking made by a magazine or other organization included in the leads of articles on companies, politicians, countries, biographies, etc. except to assert notability. All accredited universities are notable, so I see no reason why their articles should have to rely upon rankings as a crutch to describe the university. Keep the rankings out of the lead and confined to a single section in the article. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

None of these questions are unique to Wikipedia, though. Subjective rankings seem to be a fact of life in many things. Averaging rankings would violate WP:OR, I think. I don't see why rankings should be treated differently to other content in WP:LEAD as long as they are appropriately used. If there is a ranking section it should be summarized, but nothing more (or less). If rankings are being used as a "crutch" in a lead, you should fix the problem there instead of a proposing to remove all rankings. Can you list some articles that you feel have problems, and your reasons for each? LostOldPassword (talk) 20:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

A point on the assertion by Madcoverboy that putting rankings in the lead is like putting stock quotes in the lead for a company and therefore violates WP:recentism and WP:bias... I disagree with this analogy and the asserted violations. First, stock quotes differ in kind from rankings. Stock quotes by themselves are temporal measures that are valid at a single point in time and meaningless unless context is provided. University rankings are temporal measures also, but they have validity for a length of time usually beyond a year. The ranking itself also provides context since 1st is a measure relative to the field of all universities. Second, WP:recentism does not necessarily apply. Just because a ranking is recent, does not mean that it does not necessarily have value. The fact that so many university rankings exist and that they are updated on regular bases pretty much indicates this is information that people find important -- note I don't care if a given individual thinks they are not valid, the fact is the public views this as important. While historical ranking information can be of interest, in general, the more recent the ranking information, the more relevant people will find it. Third, WP:bias does not apply unless one can demonstrate the cited rankings mislead or give a false picture of the university ranking. Likewise, personal distaste for rankings or for a particular ranking system does not indicate wp:bias exists.Vantelimus (talk) 05:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

None of this speaks to whether or not rankings should appear in the lead. You are hammering away on the obvious point I don't like rankings at all, but as I've repeatedly stated, I'm not advocating their wholesale removal from every article. Rather, rankings have no place being in the lead of an article for the reasons I've outlined above - read any of the leads for the FAs and GAs I mentioned above to see examples in which a substantial amount of information that can and should be conveyed in the lead to the point that stating "State University was ranked 19th by The Daily News in 2008" is overly specific, recentist, biased, and a waste of space. Moreover, one magazine's POV ranking should not be privileged over all other POV rankings no matter how pervasive or popular it is -- thus any mention of a university's rankings should be placed in an NPOV context (namely, a single section) in which all possible rankings are contextualized rather than being selectively cited or framed to cast the school in a good light. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The fact that TIME ranked Einstein, FDR, and Ghandi as the "Top 3" people of the century does not appear in the leads of their article because their substantial accomplishments and reputation preclude the need for such ornamentation -- it appears in the appropriate context later in the article. Despite the fact that WalMart and ExxonMobil are generally atop the popular Fortune 500 list in recent years doesn't mean this fact is mentioned outright in the lead, it too is mentioned in the appropriate and limited context later in the article. Rankings for universities should be no different. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Correction: It is mentioned in Einstein's. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I did address your substantive concerns. Let's see if I can say it better this time. Rankings, in and of themselves, are information that many readers find significant and important. There are a handful of rankings that carry weight, any one of which would be appropriate to cite in a short stand alone article on a university without the need to enumerate all other rankings for the sake of context. Since the lead is supposed to be able to stand alone as a short article, the inclusion of a well-known ranking can impart a lot of information about the quality and reputation of the university -- both pieces of information that are important. Your argument that some FAs don't have rankings in the lead does not carry weight as other FAs do have rankings in the lead. This shows that there is no ad hoc consensus for omitting rankings from the lead. Your argument against privileging one magazine's POV over others misses the mark. Most instances of rankings do not use an obscure source, like the Daily News, but rather reference a well-known and often used ranking such as USNWR. The fact that you don't think USNWR should have its rankings given privileged status ignores the fact that the USNWR rankings are the most often used and most influential rankings. Indeed, the fact that USNWR is considered authoritative by the general public would argue for its use in place of a more obscure ranking, not its omission. Finally, I do not think rankings in the lead necessarily indicate biased nor boosterism. It may be the case that a school's booster might add "State University was ranked #2 regional university by USNWR" in the lead as a point of pride, but that doesn't mean the fact isn't an important one that readers will find valuable information as a quick indication of the quality of the university. Vantelimus (talk) 09:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The lack of consensus is the very issue I am raising - I am asking the question "Should a university's importance or prestige be established in the lead?" and if we accept that we should, how should we generally assert this in an NPOV and verifiable manner? I don't know why people are so wedded to invoking rankings in the lead when the only useful and appropriate context to understand these rankings is in a list of other universities' outcomes or other publications rankings, so they really do not impart any generalizable or summarizable information about the quality and reputation of the university by itself. The top 10 USNews schools have "scores" between 90-100. Compare this with the rankings for schools with the same variance in "scores" lower in the rankings: Is Princeton University (100, #1) twice as good as Texas A&M and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (50, #62) or are A&M and WPI twice as good as Arizona State University (35, #124)? Clearly the answer is no but you imply that a problematic metric based upon a single-year of data point conveys information about a university's quality or reputation, thus the analogy to a stock price. Similarly, because rankings rely upon similar data (SAT scores, retention, admissions rate, etc.) there is some correlation between different publications' rankings -- again then, why privilege one over another in the lead to assert quality/importance/prestige?

I referenced GAs/FAs only because other editors had been invoking cases of FAs in which rankings were in the lead as examples of consensus when there is clearly a large degree of variance in the practices among these articles and no explicit consensus. You ignore my argument that we are privileging a single publication's (a hypothetical Daily News) problematic ranking for one year because they are (Vantelimus alleges) authoritative, common, and influential even when the methodology for rendering these scores is a secret and varies every year which raises issues with WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NPOV. Likewise, because access to the full USNWR rankings requires a paid registration, how can we as a project ensure that all universities' ranking information is up-to-date? USNWR rankings may be common and authoritative within the United States, but any consensus we reach here becomes problematic when deciding how apply it to universities in other countries -- do we use different rankings for universities in different countries? But that would undermine the comparative argument Vantelimus advances. Should we use a general international rankings for all universities? But this wouldn't be authoritative or influential enough. How about we just leave rankings out of the lead so we can avoid importing all the analytic baggage that accompanies them? Madcoverboy (talk) 16:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think it's pretty clear that there's no consensus for the removal of rankings from the lead of all the universities articles. Moreover, I think it's also pretty clear that more editors find their inclusion in the lead useful than don't. While Wikipedia isn't a democracy, the weight of this discussion seems to be tilting away from your argument. I don't think anyone here believes that USN&WR's methods are perfect; rather, we're arguing that the rankings matter when talking about U.S. institutions and should therefore be included in the lead of articles about those schools. So long as one notes the year and cites the source for the rankings, I see no problem with their inclusion. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 16:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm... sorry I haven't been watching this particular discussion, but I think Esrever's last comment pretty much sums up the majority of what my thoughts are at the moment. Although Wikipedia is not a democracy, right now the general gist of things suggest the current lead format with rankings properly cited is not really that big of an issue. I recognize Madcoverboy for his boldness and I think taking the initiative by making everything completely NPOV and PC is a nice goal, but in reality, university rankings the the very indication of a university's level of competence, whether it directly indicates prestiege should be up to the reader to decide. I think it is important that Wikipedia does not place specific and direct thoughts into our readers' minds. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 19:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Rankings have no place in the lead of an article about a university. This is just creeping academic boosterism. I defy anyone to find any other encyclopedia that does this. The only reason it happens in Wikipedia is that most of the work on university articles tends to be done by students and alumni of that university, who, while understandably non-neutral, should try to avoid letting their loyalty to their alma mater color their encyclopedia contributions.

The lead paragraph of a university should do its best to characterize what is unique, individual, and of general interest. What is historical about the university? What unusual courses of study are available? Its unique facilities? Whether it is placed #15 or #33 on some list tells you very little of interest about that university. It doesn't even tell you much if you happen to be a high school senior contemplating college. Who cares whether Harvard outranks Cornell if you want to go to hotel school and Cornell has one and Harvard doesn't?

Every college has some ranking number. But only Rutgers can brag about Selman Waksman's work. It's bizarre to think that it's more important to mention that Rutgers is #59 than to mention that streptomycin was discovered there.

Our article about Antonin Dvorak does not mention his numerical ranking among the great composers. Our article on Alice Freeman Palmer does not try to give her a numerical rank among great teachers.

The rankings are crap to begin with. In a lead paragraph they serve no function other than a pseudo-objective substitute for bragadocio.

On a list of things that are important about colleges, ranked in order of importance, rankings rank about #65, and don't belong in the lead. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:53, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No other encyclopedia is going to do it because other encyclopedias can't update themselves as fast as we can. It has nothing to do with usefulness. There is absolutely no reason to make a rule about this. It can be decided on a case by case basis by each individual article. The article I work on in this project, BYU doesn't have such information in the lead. It used to, but we decided it just wasn't notable enough. The biggest problem I've seen with University article expansion is that people spend all of their time arguing about the lead and zero time actually improving and referencing article content. Wrad (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. --ElKevbo (talk) 03:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Just in case people missed it: academic boosterism says "remember that a university article's lead paragraph should be a quick summary of the most important facts about that institution. Move detailed listings of facts deeper into the body of the article." Madcoverboy (talk) 06:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In response to Dpbsmith... I disagree that a brief mention of rankings in the lead is "just creeping academic boosterism". You admit the lead should characterize what is of "general interest". Well, rankings attempt to summarize the reputation and quality of universities, both of which are of general interest and of especial interest to those seeking to compare universities (e.g. potential students). It may be an interesting historical note that streptomycin was discovered at Rutgers in 1943 by an exceptional grad student. But what is more interesting to a potential student is where Rutgers stands relative to other universities in biochemistry today.

The fact is that the general public, private educational foundations, and public policy makers find rankings very interesting and useful. Much time and money is spent by public and private institutions (worldwide) to develop rankings that capture different notions of quality specifically to help students and policy makers make decisions. College rankings are different in kind from someone's subjective ranking of great composers. Thus, I don't find the argument about rankings of composers at all relevant to the current discussion.Vantelimus (talk) 12:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In Riverside's case, we put the important scientific discoveries in the lead's first paragraph, followed by institutional history, followed by rankings, followed by sports. While I agree that rankings are not as important as the first two categories, they are at least as relevant to most WP readers as sports, if not moreso, and for legitimate informational reasons that don't necessarily have to do with boosterism. In some cases, these rankings may be the only third-party publication on some topics of student life at some institutions. While I only trust them to the extent their information can be collated, in cases where there is no university-published information on, for instance, the percentage of students in the Greek system, US News may be the only available source for this info. I'm not saying any rankings necesarily belong in the lead, but in Riverside's case apart from a couple news articles there were no third-party sources or publications that cover the development of the whole institution. Places with a lot of history (and a lot of legitimate scholastic resources that can be brought to bear) probably don't need to rely on rankings, or can legitimately do so to a lesser extent, but for institutions that don't have that, these rankings may provide the only information avaliable on some aspects. I entirely agree that the information is superficial, but it's all some places have got, so I'm not opposed to using rankings as a source for some statistics when there are no other sources available. Amerique^dialectics 13:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

Is there any? The only consensus I read out of the the previous debate was that it depends on the university. I frankly find this to be a failure of will and a continued lack of consensus. I admit that it appears that many editors feel that rankings can or should remain in the lead, but by no means should this discussion be WP:SNOWed. UNC's lead, for example, would appear to be palatable:

In both teaching and research, UNC has been highly ranked by publications such as BusinessWeek and U.S. News & World Report.

It lacks the tackiness and recentism but introduces peacock-ery since "highly ranked" is completely unsubstantiated - top 10? top 100? when? etc. Indeed, that many leads still claim the school has "high selectivity" in the very first breath reveals the extent to which boosterism must be actively combated. What consensus, if any, do we have on including rankings in the lead? Madcoverboy (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, based on the above comments, it seems like the weight of the discussion leans pretty heavily toward leaving things as they are, i.e., determined on a case-by-case basis. While that may be unsatisfactory to you, I think it's indicative of the fact that there are many right ways to write a Wikipedia article. If there are specific instances of "peacockery" or rankings overkill that are unpalatable to you, perhaps you could bring that up on those individual articles' talk pages. As it is, though, I don't think you're going to find WikiProject-wide consensus for your proposed changes. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 04:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends not only on the university, but one how it's said--yes, I agree the UNC statement is perfect--there's not really the need to say any more. Those who advertise them more prominently give the implication that without the emphasis, people won;'t realise how good they are. Perhaps the guidline should be: as ingle sentence, without specific numbers. DGG (talk) 18:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

It appears the consensus is case by case. On the example sentence from UNC, I'm inclined to lean towards Madcoverboy's opinion that it is neither tacky nor too recent. but lacks precision and hence leans toward peacock-ery. It is the imprecision that bothers me most. As for inclusion of "high selectivity" in the lead as an indication of boosterism, I would say it depends on whether a reference (such as the Carnegie ranking) is given. I realize that rankings and selectivity statements sound like peacock-ery and boosterism to many people, but I do think they have value. I have had many conversations over the past few years about university quality with people. From my experience, there is vast ignorance about the differences in quality between different schools. Rankings may be imperfect and may be imperfectly applied by some, but they have great value just in raising questions of what differences in quality along diverse measures (e.g. class size, faculty ratios, publication rates, research emphasis, awards, etc.) might mean to the prospective student. They raise the discourse from a level of raw boosterism to one based on relevant comparable characteristics. Vantelimus (talk) 23:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

assuming the material is supported in the article, I continue to think it appropriate for the lede paragraph. You are giving arguemnts why the ddetailed material on ranking should be included at all, not why it belongs in the lede. DGG (talk) 00:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Assessments

I'm not sure if anyone watches the page, but there are few requests for (re-) assessments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Assessment#Requesting an assessment or re-assessment if anyone who contributes here can help. I'm probably not impartial enough to look at them myself... LostOldPassword (talk) 04:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I normally try to go through and clean those out on a semi-regular basis, but I hesitate to futz around with the GA-to-A-Class assessment. I find the distinction between GA and A to be fairly meaningless; both represent a standard of excellence that falls short of FA (not that there's anything wrong with that) but that is still well above B-Class. I think those articles are typically better served by peer review or the FAC process than they are by me taking a look at them. If others feel like taking a crack at them, though, by all means do so. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 04:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Högskolan/University College

Hello. I was disambiguating links and after a series of pages while looking in-depth, ended up on Högskolan pages, one which needs to be histmerged (University of Kalmar) and another I'm not sure about (University of Skövde). Should they stay (and the latter also histmerged) or should they be at University College (with the latter redirected)? --Squids'n'Chips 22:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Secret society infobox?

I can't find anywhere else to ask this. Is there an infobox for collegiate secret societies in North America? If not, what might be the best alternative? --Geniac (talk) 13:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of one. You could try asking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Secret Societies or modify the fraternities one. Hippo (talk) 16:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, crap. I would have asked there if I had found it. Thanks. --Geniac (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is a secret. - X201 (talk) 17:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)