Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education

WikiProject Higher education
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Higher education pages by quality Quality Total FA 45 FL 59 FM 20 A 1 GA 227 B 1,220 C 4,284 Start 17,161 Stub 15,843 List 1,948 Category 29,016 Disambig 131 File 5,295 Project 48 Template 2,034 NA 2,088 Assessed 79,420 Unassessed 2,129 Total 81,549 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 202,114 Ω = 5.21
Things To Do
Work on articles that need cleanup. Create a page for every university and college and add {{infobox University}} for it. See the missing list for those institutions still awaiting articles. Place {{WikiProject Higher education}} on every related talk page. Combat boosterism wherever it appears Ensure all articles, including Featured articles, are consistent with the article guidelines.

Request for Expert Contributions

Dear Authors,

I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out to invite your expertise and collaboration in improving the quality and accuracy of the Wikipedia article draft on Don Bosco College, Panjim. As experts and contributors in this field, your insights and contributions would be invaluable in ensuring that the information presented is comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date.

The current draft can be found here: Draft:Don Bosco College, Panjim

We are particularly looking for improvements in the following areas:

1. History: Detailed historical background and significant milestones.
2. Academic Programs: Comprehensive list and descriptions of academic programs offered.
3. Notable Alumni: Information on notable alumni and their achievements.
4. References: Addition of reliable sources to improve the article's credibility.
5. Notability: Information and sources that demonstrate the college's significance and impact.

Improving the notability of the draft is crucial for its acceptance as a full Wikipedia article. Notability can be established through reliable secondary sources such as news articles, academic papers, and books that discuss the college in detail.

Contributing to Wikipedia is a collaborative and transparent process. You can make edits directly to the draft, or if you prefer, share your suggestions and sources here, and we can incorporate them accordingly. Your contributions will be properly cited, ensuring that your work is recognized.

Thank you for considering this request. Your participation would greatly enrich the Wikipedia community and help disseminate reliable information to a global audience.

Best regards,

Xcus

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If you have any questions or need assistance with editing, please do not hesitate to reach out.

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Note: This request has been made in good faith to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles and is in accordance with Wikipedia's guidelines for sourcing and citation. Please ensure that all contributions adhere to Wikipedia's content policies, including verifiability and no original research.

Economic demographics at U.S. colleges

I'd like to update the data for economic demographics at U.S. colleges. It seems that the only data regularly reported by all schools is the percentage of Pell Grant-eligible students, which is a pretty rudimentary metric, so in the past I've used the 2013 data from Opportunity Insights (as reported by the NYT), which includes estimates of median family income, percentage of students from families in top 10% income, and percentage of students from families in bottom 60% income. It seems that they came out with an updated report in 2023 (NYT report), which breaks it down by income quintile but doesn't report the median and only updates the data to 2015. Is it possible to do any better, or is this information just not accessible? Courtesy pinging ElKevbo as I feel like this is your area of expertise. It'd be nice to provide some more granular data than the charts e.g. here without having to resort to old data. Sdkb ^talk 19:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the vote of confidence but this isn't my area of expertise. To the best of knowledge, you're correct that much of this work relies on number or percentage of Pell-grant recipients as that is the only relevant data that is consistently collected by the federal government and made accessible to scholars and researchers (and reporters and partisan think tanks and hacks with an axe to grind and...). As far as I know, more detailed work has to pull from other data sources. For example, I think that the Equality of Opportunity project has done their own analysis of tax data and I imagine that many studies have relied on survey information. But I don't know if there is a good national database for every institution that is regularly updated. ElKevbo (talk) 22:36, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, the Equality of Opportunity project is now Opportunity Insights. Thanks for the reply; hopefully some better data comes along at some point. Sdkb ^talk 06:24, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Daniel Diermeier

Hi editors, I made some changes to a request on the Daniel Diermeier article Talk page following some feedback, but no one has had any further response since I posted those changes. Would anyone here be interested in taking a look? I'd really appreciate it. Cheers VandyBE (talk) 22:08, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Input requested at Talk:Bard College

Two editors are having a dispute at Talk:Bard College. Input from other editors would be very helpful. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 02:34, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Virginia Tech#Requested move 3 October 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Virginia Tech#Requested move 3 October 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Web-julio (talk) 03:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

"Producing" Fulbright scholars

This is a really unfortunate expression found in lots of higher ed articles, sometimes even in the ledes, that state how many Fulbright scholars a given institution has "produced." Does anyone have a suggestion for expressing this idea in a more appropriate way? Schools don't produce much of anything, although they do cultivate, encourage, and lead. It is POV to claim the school "makes" these things happen. Also, from an anthropological standpoint, I don't think intellectual gifts are "produced," it is rather materialistic, like "producing" love. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 14:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for opening this discussion.

I've removed similar language about other topics - award recipients, millionaires, etc. - on the same basic grounds. In those cases, I think that I've tended to use language like "is associated with" or "has alumni who are."

I have not edited the word "produce" as it relates to Fulbright scholars on the sole grounds that the verb is very widely used by the reliable sources that we cite in those articles. I strongly disagree with the use of that word in this context - it's fair to imagine that many of those people would be just as successful at other institutions or in different contexts so giving all of the credit to the institution seems to be wrong - but I don't think it's appropriate for one editor to make the decision to use language that is different from that used by the overwhelming number of reliable sources. ElKevbo (talk) 14:43, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Dispute about lede of Albert Einstein College of Medicine

There is a disagreement about the contents of the lede of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Additional opinions are welcome in the article's Talk page. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 11:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Appalachian School of Law

Appalachian School of Law has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 01:25, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on Alumni and Institutional Influence in University Article Ledes

Hi everyone, I’d like to open a discussion regarding the recent edits made to the ledes of several university articles, particularly Stanford, Caltech, and MIT, where mentions of their influence on modern disciplines and notable alumni have been removed. These edits, made by user EC2say (diffs: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), seem to aim at reducing the "prestige" tone in these articles, but I'm unsure if the removal of references to institutional influence is justified.

While the edits do result in a cleaner lede, I’m concerned that important context regarding the universities' impact on academia and related fields is being lost. At the same time, similar changes have not been applied to articles for other major institutions, such as Harvard and UChicago. I believe this brings up a larger question about how we handle mentions of institutional influence and alumni in university articles. Should such content be minimized in the lede, or does it provide necessary context for readers to understand the institutions’ roles in shaping modern academia and society? It seems this is something we should discuss project-wide. Would a community consensus be helpful here, potentially through an RFC? I’d appreciate your thoughts on how we can approach these edits consistently and in line with Wikipedia’s guidelines. BorderlineRebel (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@BorderlineRebel, when discussing edits made by a user, you should ping the user, in this case @EC2say. Regarding the larger question, the current guiding precedent in this area is WP:HIGHEREDREP, which I see EC2say cited in their edit summaries. There are certainly questions about how to apply that consensus in practice, though, given that there are few thoroughly discussed examples to use. Sdkb ^talk 16:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Note that said user tried to remove the prestige line from Harvard's article [1] but I've reverted it given the extensive discussions about that article. He's done it with other pages too but I have not reverted them as of yet. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 18:47, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I reverted the user's removal of a mention of the Chicago Pile from the University of Chicago's page as well. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 18:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@BorderlineRebel @Jessintime I've since applied the same edits to the pages of Harvard and UChicago. I think my understanding of applying precent according to WP:HIGHEREDREP means consistency across all universities. I sympathize with your thoughts, but there needs to be consistency or else this becomes an edit competition trying to promote some universities but not others.

I'll cite Berkeley, for example, is very much a peer institution of Stanford, Caltech, and MIT by influence and research output. Yet there have been edits constantly by @GuardianH to remove any sort of mentioning of influence as reference to prestige. That's not just speaking for Berkeley, but other many peer institutions as well. I noticed this especially with peer public (Berkeley, UCLA, UMichigan, UVA, UIUC) vs. private ("Ivy"-esque) universities, there should not be preferential treatment for one or the other when historically the influence and research output is comparable.

I'm open to more dialogue on how to improve the process, but we can't be policing some pages while not policing others and giving preferential treatment. EC2say (talk) 18:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

This isn't about preferential treatment. The RFC you link to does not mean we cannot mention a college's prestige or whatever in its lede, but that if we do we need sources to back it up. Harvard's prestige should be a settled matter at this point given the extensive discussions about it in the past. As for UChicago, I see no reason why the mention of Chicago Pile-1 should not remain in the lede, and your edit summary gave no reason for its removal either. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

One issue that certainly arises is that prestige is mentioned and sourced in the lede, but there is no corresponding discussion in the body. As the lede is a summary of the article, there shouldn't be mention of prestige in the lede unless there is significant discussion in the body. The discussion in the lede of Chicago Pile-1 is pretty much the same length as its discussion in the body, which would appear to indicate it is being disproportionately discussed in the lede. (I happen to think it should be in the lede, but this means the discussion in the body needs to be extended). Robminchin (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The place for it in the body is to take any existing "rankings" section and retitle it "reputation and rankings". The individual rankings shouldn't be mentioned in the lead, but the reputation should. Sdkb ^talk 14:19, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with Sdkb. Following that suggestion and based on the guidelines from WP:HIGHEREDREP Specifically the consensus against P1 and the consensus for the principles outlined by P2 and P3, I propose retitling the 'Rankings' section of similar institutions to 'Reputation and rankings', moving mention of prizes and award to this section, and ensuring the lede reflects only reputation, supported by the body content. Does anyone have any concerns or further thoughts before I proceed with this edit? BorderlineRebel (talk) 17:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

"Millions over millions" to describe buildings and projects

In many articles, new buildings on campus are referred to as "the $ 48-million Peabody Center" or there will be some assertion about how much something cost. This information is only sourced in a very general way, it is hard to confirm, and often it is promotional because it says that the building was donated by so-and-so. Do other editors think that this is legitimately sourced, and is it truly important for Wiki-purposes? -- Melchior2006 (talk) 21:52, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

There's no way of saying generically if this is well sourced, that's obviously going to vary between articles. If it isn't properly sourced, then it can be removed. Robminchin (talk) 04:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 21:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)