Talk:Austin College

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Most popular majors - reversion

I puzzled by the rationale for this edit [1]. The link works fine, and what the list means is perfectly clear...it is a list of the most popular majors as reported by 2021 graduates of the college. Now, between the time I posted this and today, the website has been updated to the numbers for 2022 graduates, so perhaps that is the source of confusion. I have been adding this information to college articles a few each day. I think it is useful information and see no reason for it to be deleted. Banks Irk (talk) 21:10, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When I visited the site two days ago I got a "page not found" error. For me, the numbers mean nothing without context. For example, Psychology (32) means... there were 32 graduates? 32% of students took it? It's a leftover footnote from the original page that got copied over?

From a substantive point of view, I have a few issues with this content: first, the fact that the numbers are always changing, and as you state the numbers you provided two days ago are already out-of-sync with the source. Second, there is a bit of OR here - why choose the specific majors instead of the broader categories? Why the top 5? What if you miss a number? Third, I'm genuinely not sure that raw statistics are what constitutes encyclopedic content. If a printed report said "in 2021 the top majors were X, Y, and Z" then I would be more okay with that, but this is a rolling count of whatever numbers happen to be pushed through NCES. To put it another way - is Austin known for being a good school for psychology, and that's why it's the most popular major, or did it just happen to be that this year this cohort of graduating students decided that they wanted to get a degree in psychology?

In general I do not have issue with saying "this school is known for X, Y, and/or Z" with a reference that shows that graduates are more likely to graduate in those fields, but just slapping rolling numbers up (which as indicated are already out of date) is problematic. Primefac (talk) 11:18, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]