Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education

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WikiProject Higher education was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 30 August 2010.

WikiProject Higher education

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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:

History: Detailed historical background and significant milestones.
Academic Programs: Comprehensive list and descriptions of academic programs offered.
Notable Alumni: Information on notable alumni and their achievements.
References: Addition of reliable sources to improve the article's credibility.
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

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

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.

Additional eyes requested at Daniels College of Business

Can other editors please take a look at the recent edit history of Daniels College of Business and weigh in? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 22:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Technical University of Braunschweig#Requested move 8 March 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Technical University of Braunschweig#Requested move 8 March 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 23:13, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Culinary Institute of America request

Hi WikiProject Higher Education, I made an edit request for The Culinary Institute of America that may be of interest to editors here. The request expands on the history of course offerings at the college. Cheers, BINK Robin (talk) 19:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for University of Miami

University of Miami 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) 16:19, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ongoing proposal - merge inactive higher education Wikiprojects

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Higher_education/Archive_13#Merge_of_inactive_higher_education_wikiprojects

Joe Roe proposed this in 2024. The discussion advanced a bit then got auto-archived. I wanted to revive it a bit and say that I continue to be interest in taking some kind of action to get more support for more university engagement in Wikimedia projects. My angle for this is participating in meta:WikiCite, which seeks to index academic publications in Wikidata. There will be a meta:WikiCite 2025 conference in Switzerland in August. I will be participating virtually.

I would like to better connect and model Wikidata's d:Wikidata:WikiProject Higher education, which I think could help define universities in Wikipedia. There are some standard datasets for universities, like location, number of faculty, list of schools/subunits, number of students, and endowment; and there are also some commonly requested kinds of information like list of faculty who have Wikipedia articles, awards to a university or its faculty, which I would like to make more accessible.

I do not have action to take right now but I am linking to the archived discussion to express continued interest. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:41, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My views on upmerging wikiprojects on individual universities remain the same as they were at that archived discussion — absent extenuating circumstances, there isn't the activity to justify having them in this age.

I'm not quite sure how that relates to the rest of your message, where you talk about improving the data around universities at Wikidata. On that, I spent some time in the past importing IPEDS data to Wikidata, but there's probably more data to import or updates to make that could be very useful (just please add full citations when you do so). I also spent some time improving Pomona College (Q7227384) to showcase item status (Wikidata's equivalent of FA) and filling out d:Wikidata:WikiProject Higher education/Recommended statements, so those should be useful as models from which to find statements to add elsewhere.

Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 19:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pharos gave me a heads up to post here; roped me into modifying the banner template so that it supports an arbitrary number of taskforces. See User:Tduk/Sandbox; thoughts welcome.. Tduk (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's sufficient consensus (or at least lack of objection) in that discussion to merge the listed projects – I removed all the ones that people objected to from the list. There is some doubt over whether it is best to merge e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Florida International University into WP Higher Ed or into WP United States, but since these are completely dead projects we're talking about I don't think that choice will have major ramifications either way. I just haven't had the time to do the merge yet; a bit of a recurring issue when you have to wait at least a month after proposing it. – Joe (talk) 05:54, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have proposed updating Template:WikiProject Higher education to Tduk's Lua-enabled version, to be able to accommodate an arbitrary number of task forces for individual universities Pharos (talk) 14:43, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have implemented the Lua-enabled version now, and updated all of the Student Affairs taskforce banners. It should now be rather easier to merge in other less-than-fully-active wikiprojects as taskforces here, to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Pharos (talk) 18:26, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dead projects should not be supported, they should be marked as defunct and have their banners removed. Continual support for a system that no one uses is pointless. Gonnym (talk) 13:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I should mention that being a Wikipedian in residence I've been looking to redevelop Wikipedia:WikiProject City University of New York as a project documenting the spread of CUNY-related articles, and thought it worked better as a taskforce rather than a separate wikiproject. And that this might also make sense for other individual institutions as well.--Pharos (talk) 18:09, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it makes sense for others, I'll plan to add the CUNY-related articles (primarily biographies) to a taskforce soon, as that seems more prudent than building out a whole separate wikiproject. Pharos (talk) 20:15, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would oppose the creation of any new wikiproject focusing on a specific university. A taskforce sounds alright if you need it for a specific reason. Sdkb ^talk 21:21, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of presidents

The highered articles that have been awarded quality prizes usually do not have sections with long lists of presidents. I find these lists distracting and often UNDUE. They overemphasize the role of the president and they often come rather early in the article, making a clunky impression. I would argue for deleting a lot of them and only making reference to a few influential or historically significant presidents. Are there arguments for keeping them in the list format within the articles? -- Melchior2006 (talk) 08:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's often the case that for many larger institutions these have been split off into separate list articles rather than removed from the encyclopedia (see Category:Lists of university and college leaders). This does, of course, require that they can stand on their own as notable – but as this is the sort of thing that published histories tend to include (and these exist for many institutions) that's often not an issue. Robminchin (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Concurred. The role of influential presidents will often come up naturally in the history section, so I'd prefer to see them discussed there and a list saved for a separate article. Sdkb ^talk 17:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I will start editing accordingly. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 11:15, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance requested at Lamar State College–Orange

Can someone else please take a look at the recent edit history of Lamar State College–Orange? There is a disagreement between two editors so some additional opinions would be helpful. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 23:41, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance requested at Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education

Could some editors please help update the article? Thanks Crampcomes (talk) 18:29, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Master of Science in Administration

Please add reliable sources, or this risks being deleted. Bearian (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of several articles about masters degrees which are totally unsourced. The course exists at the University of Central Michigan, link. A complete list is

Master of Biochemistry, tagged in 2011
Master of Biological Sciences, tagged in 2009
Master of Chemistry, tagged in 2014
Master of Criminal Justice, tagged in 2014
Master of Information System Management, tagged in 2017
Master of International Studies, tagged in 2013
Master of Science in Administration, tagged in 2009
Master of Science in Engineering, tagged in 2025
Master of Science in Project Management, tagged in 2019

TSventon (talk) 10:11, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Additional input requested at Pasco–Hernando State College

Can someone else please take a look at the recent edit history of Pasco–Hernando State College? I have some concerns about recent edits and would appreciate opinions from others. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 00:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I addressed issues and added content. Rublamb (talk) 09:15, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

College/university colors used for tables in articles

In some articles about colleges and universities, editors have chosen to use the colors of the institution to style tables in the article including tables that are created by templates e.g., two of the rankings tables in the University of California, Irvine article, Template:American University.

I am concerned about this practice. First and most importantly, I worry that they give readers the false impression that the articles are actually connected with the institutions. Second, and only in some cases, the specific colors or the specific ways in which they're used in an article are low contrast which presents accessibility concerns.

Do others share these concerns or am I alone in this? ElKevbo (talk) 23:38, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of the oddest things that happens is hiding of main links "Avoid using colored links as it may hinder the reader's ability to distinguish links from regular text, or coloring links solely for aesthetic purposes" as in the following should look like a link American UniversityMoxy🍁 00:05, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really share the first concern — a school's colors are a pretty mild piece of branding that I don't think really causes readers to think the articles are sponsored. The same logic would have us removing seals/logos from infoboxes, as those are a much stronger piece of branding. In both cases, a school's branding is a part of its identity that we should note in a full encyclopedic description of it, and tables are a convenient place to do that. For navboxes like your example for American University, there is an added benefit in that, at articles that have navboxes both related and unrelated to the school (like WAMU), it makes it easier to visually identify at a glance which navbox is the one related to the school.

For the second concern, yes, we should be adhering to reasonable accessibility standards for contrast. But the need to fix colored tables that don't follow them isn't a reason to do away with colored tables entirely. Sdkb ^talk 04:13, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Colours in navboxes seem fine to me, for the reason stated above that it identified it as a school navbox on pages with multiple navboxes, they get used across multiple different pages, and navboxes are typically coloured. I would hesitate to use then in other tables such as rankings though as there is no good reason to associate that take visually with the institution. Robminchin (talk) 21:26, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was a discussion about political templates in 2019 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates/Archive 6#Advertising colors. I believe that colours were removed in that case. TSventon (talk) 05:03, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anyone is going to think the Wikipedia article is linked to the university because of colors. I do have concerns about readability due to contrast between the background color and text. Although this is fine in some cases, in others it is a total mess. Rublamb (talk) 01:55, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for University College, Durham

University College, Durham 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) 18:05, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]