Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education

Hello, I'm an employee at UNT Health Fort Worth and I was wondering if anyone at this WikiProject would be interested in reviewing a COI edit request. The university underwent a rebrand last summer—we used to be called UNTHSC—and consequently we've renamed some of our sub-institutions as well. This goes for our clinical branch, which was called HSC Health and is now called UNT Health Clinical Practice Group. My request is to update the section with the new name and add a couple simple sentences that are backed up by decent sourcing. (The current passage has no citations.)

If that sounds up anybody's alley, you can view my request by using this link. Thanks! LM at UNT Health (talk) 20:08, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I would like to request a new rule:

Every single college or university, where possible, should maintain a list of Presidents, Superintendents, or other leading people of that institution. It feels really amateur of an encyclopedia not to have a list. These lists do not have to be exhaustive, but when people come to wikipedia, they mostly do it to learn history – not to read about some stupid endowment nobody cares about. Guylaen (talk) 00:44, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia content ideally reflects the weight reliable sources give to different aspects of a topic. In most cases that'll mean covering the presidents, although for some institutions that have had a lot of them it may make more sense to put that at "List of [institution] people" than at the main article. Sdkb ^talk 05:25, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Please review and assess the article Daffodil International University for quality and importance rating. The article has been significantly expanded with updated information on campus, research, rankings, and international collaborations. Thank you. 0ximjub43r (talk) 22:31, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

A temporary-account user questioned, at the Teahouse, why the "logo" of St. Mary's College of Maryland was its seal, not the image that the college itself apparently regards as its logo. This, I think, is a misunderstanding, because they're looking at the info-box, which does indeed have an image declared internally with the parameter "logo=", and this image is indeed the thing that the college regards as its logo. But it's quite low down in the info-box. The image at the top of the info-box is the college's seal, and the info box declares it merely as "image=". There is no title within the info box to indicate to readers that the first image is a seal, not a logo. Personally I have no problem with putting the college's seal at the top of college info-boxes, but I think we owe it to our readers to tell them what we're doing. Would it be helpful if the college infobox template specifically added "Seal" to the top image, in the same way that it identifies the college's motto as "Motto", its type as "Type" and so on? The logo, similarly, is currently not identified as such. Elemimele (talk) 16:31, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to mock it up. My instinctual reaction, though, is that in most cases it's fairly obvious to readers what's a logo and what's a seal. Sdkb ^talk 16:51, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

There is a caption field for the infobox image, which is not used for St. Mary's College of Maryland. Would adding | caption = College seal after the image be sufficient? TSventon (talk) 17:09, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Using the caption field would seem the obvious answer. This seems like a failure on the part of editors of that page to use the caption field provided to say what the image shows, not a problem with the infobox. Many universities don't have an image of the seal in the top image, so adding 'seal' automatically would not be appropriate. Robminchin (talk) 18:09, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! OK, I've tried it; see what you think? Elemimele (talk) 20:10, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Robminchin (talk) 22:26, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

This question is more correctly discussed at Template:Infobox university. Its parameters for image state "Institution-related graphic, preferably the official seal or logo", so either is correct. Furthermore, the example provided in the template for the fictional University of IIlyria uses the caption field to state "Seal of University of Illyria". Some prior discussions can be found at Template talk:Infobox university/Archive 7#image vs. logo? and Template talk:Infobox university/Archive 7#Seal/logo position Rublamb (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford#Requested move 10 July 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 14:15, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

I have submitted a COI edit request at Talk:University of Sciences and Arts in Lebanon#Request to expand redirect into a standalone article asking for an independent assessment of whether the existing redirect should be expanded into a standalone article.

I am affiliated with the university and have disclosed this conflict of interest, so I am seeking review by uninvolved editors rather than making the change myself. The request includes several external sources and institutional records that may assist in assessing notability.

Input from editors familiar with higher-education articles would be appreciated. Thank you. Hadifadlallah (talk) 11:50, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University#Requested move 13 August 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. —BrechtBro (talk) 19:02, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Tula's Institute#Requested move 6 August 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 10:32, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:European University of Madrid#Requested move 7 August 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 10:32, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I do a lot of work at University College London and in the forthcoming academic year I'm going to be running a campaign to celebrate UCL's 200th anniversary. We'll improve coverage of historical UCL topics, go on photowalks to improve UCL coverage on Commons, and look at Wikidata too. We're aiming this at anyone within the UCL community (former and current staff/students) but anyone is welcome to get involced. I will share more details next month when I've confirmed rooms for sessions but in the meantime I've started a page for this project here. Octavosaurus (talk) 11:28, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Per discussion on my talk page between me and Rublamb, I'd like to clarify and get feedback on the scope of this project as it pertains to sports, particularly American college sports. Does Michigan Wolverines, the general page describing the intercollegiate athletic programs at the University of Michigan, fall under the scope of this project? Drilling down, what about articles for the specific athletic programs by sport, like Michigan Wolverines football and Michigan Wolverines men's basketball. Drilling down still further, what about 2025–26 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team and 2023 Michigan Wolverines football team and the like? What about bio articles for the coaches and players for these college sports teams like Jim Harbaugh or Yaxel Lendeborg? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 14:09, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

The short answer is yes, although not a main focus of WP:UNI. The custom of creating articles such as Michigan Wolverines began when the main university articles were too long, meaning that many team-centered articles originated as a division of the main university article. See Wikipedia:College and university article advice#Sub-articles for more information. Note that the university articles include a summary of athletics and a link to the sport team article; athletics information is also part of Infobox University. Rublamb (talk) 14:17, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

The argument for Michigan Wolverines being included in this project's scope seems a lot stronger than that for 2023 Michigan Wolverines football team or Yaxel Lendeborg. Yes, Template:University of Michigan indeed contains links to high-level articles about sports, but not things like 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team. Those are saved for Template:Michigan Wolverines football navbox. How relevant is the early developmental history of Wikipedia content here regarding how we want to manage things now and going forward? Articles like 2006 Michigan Wolverines football team have been first-order creations going back 20 years now. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:20, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

First-order creations are still are part of the coverage of the university and its student life. Again, these are not be a high priority for WP:UNI as we, for the most part, gladly leave such articles to editors such as yourself who come from the sports Wikiprojects and do not participate in WP:UNI. Note that Georgetown Hoyas is provided as an example of Showcase articles on the WP's main page, while List of Academic All-America Team Members of the Year, List of Baseball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year, List of Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year, University of Southwestern Louisiana basketball scandal, and others are included in the Wikiprojects examples of FL and GA.

WP:UNI overlaps with hundreds of Wikiprojects, from locations to Fraternities and Sororities, Organizations, lists, specific universities, fields of study (law, medicine, etc.), Biographies, Architecture, and even sports. There is no threat to the sports WikiProjects when a university or college athletics article is identified as falling under the scope of WP:UNI. In fact, such recognition might help to find an editor who can improve what are frequently stubs or under-sourced articles. It will also provide more eyes if an article is put up for AfD, etc. I see the relationship between WP:UNI and the sports WikiProjects as a win-win, rather than something to be concerned about. Rublamb (talk) 15:49, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm participating in WP:UNI right now, and have many times in the past as well, cf. here. The showcase articles you mention above entail the intersection of college sports with the academic and general cultural aspects of higher education, so those are all obviously in the scope of this project. To clarify where I'm coming from, I'm a stickler for consistent and comprehensive application of formats and standards on Wikipedia. What I'm concerned about is half-baked or 1%-baked operations here. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:19, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate any updates you have made to articles that fall under WP:UNI; when I stated you do not participate in the WP:UNI, I meant that you had not registered as an active participant. Thus, the WikiProject tag does not really impact your work in Wikipedia. I too like consistency. However, somewhere in the vastness of Wikipedia's guidelines, its says that "we have always done it like that" is not a valid reason to stop making improvements. In another related WikiProject, we had concerted effort to identify and tag articles that we had missed. We ended up tripling the number of articles under that WP, meaning the norm was not being tagged. Now, we have addressed the maintenance tags and sourcing issues on many of those articles; some had been problems for a really long time. If we had followed your logic, this would not have happened and some of those articles would have gone under AfD. Rublamb (talk) 18:03, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Rublamb, sorry for the delayed reply. I've been super busy with life outside Wikipedia of late. I'd like to think that the hundreds or maybe even thousands of edits I've made to higher education articles and pages, including several article creations (e.g. DeSales College, Kansas Technical Institute (Topeka)) is more meaningful participation in this WikiProject than simply putting my name on that list of participants. I would bet that many of the people on that list haven't even made a single edit to Wikipedia in several years. And if the scope of this project actually includes all of college sports, then I might be the most prolific editor (by edit count) in this history of this WikiProject. I'm curious as to which related WikiProject was there that concerted effort to identify and tag articles that were missed? If any article is really in the scope of a given WikiProject and is missing the associated project tag, I'm all for adding it. But I still question how much sense it makes to consider every college sports article within the scope of this project. Along these lines, take another related project, Wikipedia:WikiProject Education, which states in its scope section that "WikiProject Education maintains and improves all articles within the Education category structure." I assume that means that everything that falls under Category:Education is in the scope of that project. Well that would include every article about higher education and every article about college sports and a lot more! I think the reality there is that WikiProject Education is a relatively immature project, and not enough serious thought has been given to the scope of that project. For a comparison about gross activity and maturity of WikiProjects, total edits on the WikiProject talk page is a good proxy. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education has a total of 1,363 all-time edits. This talk page has 6,805, while Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football has 16,913, including 2,550 by me alone, nearly twice as many as all the edits at the WikiProject Education for all editors! What this means is that at WikiProject College football we've given more serious thought to many aspects of project management, including scope, than we have at many other WikiProjects.

As for concerted efforts, what I don't see with your recent tagging of a handful of North Carolina college football team season articles, is a concerted effort. If you've identified tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles that need tagging, then a concerted effort would consist of things like 1) notifying all related WikiProject about the shortfall 2) asking for a help to form a team effort to tackle this gap in project tagging, 3) seeing about getting a bot to help, or 4) bearing down and doing hundreds or thousands of tags yourself. As far I know, you've done none of these things. There is no concerted effort here. There is only a very questionable, less than 1%-baked cake. I'd love to get an opinion about these questions of project scope from at least one editor other than you, ideally several. Any ideas about how we can get more input? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 01:08, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

And given that one of my frequent tasks on college football articles and others is to see that the project tags on talk pages are comprehensive and consistently formatted, yes, this does impact my work on Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:14, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

WikiProject tags are supposed to be added by members of that WikiProject. Although editors frequently "help" by adding tags for unaffiliated groups, you do not need to worry about groups that you have not officially joined. It is not your problem or responsibility. Rublamb (talk) 01:33, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Guess who's "officially joined" now after years of steady participation? Is this my problem or my responsibility now? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:56, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

As I've said before, this is not a concerted effort as it is not a priority of WP:UNI. Rather, I add WP:UNI to appropriate articles that I come across. Since I am most recently working on the backlog of WP:North Carolina articles that needed class or importance, you are seeing changes to many articles that fall within that subject matter. Recently, I have also worked on backlogs for WP:LISTS, WP:UNI, and WP:Virginia, WP:BIO that potentially also overlap with sports. Since such changes have been made by me and others for years, I suspect you have noticed this for the first time because of the large number of articles that have been updated in a short time period. Still don't see what the issue is since overlapping WikiProjects is common. Previously, you were concerned about WP:LISTS being added to college sports articles... Yes, I can ask other editors to respond, but I know they dislike drama. Rublamb (talk) 01:22, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

It's not a priority that WP:UNI is missing hundreds of thousands of tags? Hmm. I have no problem with overlapping WikiProjects. I tag articles, college football and otherwise, for WP:LISTS, WP:UNI, WP:BIO, various state projects, and many others all the time. What I have a problem with is project scope creep and spurious, spammy project tags. One of things that would help minimize the drama would be actually engaging with the arguments that I'm making instead of being evasive and dismissive of them. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:59, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

I have been patient and have tried to be polite. I have explained several times how these articles fit under WP:UNI. I have shared the WP's description and scope, established by consensus years ago. I have reviewed the shared history of the two WikiProjects and how they overlap. You are unwilling to accept this history and relationship, or the autonomy of each WikiProject to define its scope. You continue question the motives behind of my work. You have called my WP additions "spurious", "spammy", "questionable", "1%-baked" and more. And yet, you wonder why I or anyone else might be reluctant to join this conversation. Rublamb (talk) 02:37, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

You haven't been patient or polite, but you can keep telling yourself that. Can you point me to where this consensus was established about scope? The reason no one else has joined this conversation is far more likely that there's no one really watching this page. This is a relatively low-activity/low-attendance WikiProject. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:50, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

At the shallow end we have things such as 1902 East Florida Seminary football team, which is older than the article about the school, East Florida Seminary. Donald Albury 17:36, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Great example of the content bias within Wikipedia! Rublamb (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, the wikiproject covers everything about higher education. That includes university and college sports, museums, buildings, libraries, residences, etc. If it's higher education, it's under the higher education wikiproject umbrella. That would include coaches and players who are notable for their work in higher education just as much as it includes university presidents and professors. I don't think it would include players or coaches who are only notable for what they've done outside of higher education but played or coached in higher education at some point, just as it doesn't include all graduates. Robminchin (talk) 22:41, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Robminchin, we have 166,500 total pages tagged for Wikipedia:WikiProject College football. There are 63,347 for Wikipedia:WikiProject College basketball and another 24,893 Wikipedia:WikiProject College baseball. There's a small bit of overlap here, but we're talking about easily 200,000 articles and pages here without getting into other college sports. Very few (less than 1%) of these 200,000 are currently tagged for WikiProject Higher education, while WikiProject Higher education has only 95,281 total pages tagged. So this project has tagged less than 1/3 of all pages that you believe are in its scope? Can you give an example of "players or coaches who are only notable for what they've done outside of higher education but played or coached in higher education at some point." Jweiss11 (talk) 02:19, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Burt Reynolds, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Garth Brooks immediately came to mind to me. Rublamb (talk) 13:30, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Jweiss11, thank you for your extensive work in updating these popular university sports articles. Rublamb noted that one of these predates the article for the university itself; I'd infer that this was a common occurrence in the early days, due to the overwhelming interest and broad fan base across sports. I'd also guess that the vast majority of editors involved in the sports pages are focused on up-to-date statistics rather than the mundane work of formatting, categorizing and clean-up editing that remains important for readability and research. --It's a guess, but I think a correct one. You, JWeiss, are a standout in that sort of cleanup, besides your statistical and textual work. I appreciate this. We've corresponded before.

Weighing the discussion above, I think that of all the issues impacted by the "big tent/small tent" debate, the addition of categories should be strongly "big tent". My POV is that categories make research far easier when the list of applicable categories is comprehensive. Wikipedia's consensus supports this, and allows editors to hang many category tags on articles that are at the intersection of many topics. Some are strongly connected, others less so, but in this case, I think Rublamb is right in that these sports articles should be linked to their school or in the case of professional sports, to their metro areas. I mean, I'd view it as a glaring omission if the Green Bay city article didn't include a category and text summary linking it to the Green Bay Packers. See? Some people will find the sports articles they are looking for, by first going to the school article. I say, let these multiple categories stand, and thus make Wikipedia more useful.

(ed notes: Bringing this back to first tier indentation. Fixing a couple of typos because this will likely be archived for posterity.) Jax MN (talk) 14:49, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Jax MN, thanks for your comments on my work, and your thoughts about this discussion. Youreusername certainly rings a bell, but I can't recall specifically what we corresponded about in the past. Yes, there is no limit on the number of categories for a given article, but one of the central rules about categorization is that a given article generally should not be placed in a given category and also a parent or child or grandparent of grandchild (and so on) of that category; cf. WP:CATSPECIFIC. Take 2023 Michigan Wolverines football team for example. It's categorized in Category:Michigan Wolverines football seasons and Category:2023 in sports in Michigan among several others. However, the article is not categorized under Category:Michigan Wolverines football, a parent of Category:Michigan Wolverines football seasons. And it's not in Category:Michigan Wolverines or Category:University of Michigan or Category:Universities and colleges in Michigan or Category:Education in Michigan going higher up the category tree. It's not in Category:Ann Arbor, Michigan either. Green Bay, Wisconsin has an entire subsection about the Green Bay Packers, but is correctly not categorized in Category:Green Bay Packers.

The discussion here is centrally about the scope WikiProjects, not categories. Do you have an opinion specifically about the question I posed regarding this project's scope? Jweiss11 (talk) 20:57, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it should cover college sports. There are so many sports articles that tagging all of them with this would delude the purpose of this WikiProject. Jweiss11 said above there are about 200,000 college sports articles and there are 95,281 WikiProject Higher education articles. If a bot went through and tagged all of the college sports articles with WikiProject Higher education, then over 2/3 of the project's articles would be sports..... ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 12:15, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

I could be persuaded to exclude the bulk of college sports articles based not on numbers, but on their oversight by a large and active sister WikiProject. On the other hand, we continue to tag articles about fraternities, honor societies, student groups, etc., even though WP:FRAT and WP:ORGZ have the primary oversight of those articles. In those cases, the benefit of overlap is that WP:UNI will be around if those groups go inactive (one is small, and the other is undergoing an attempted revival after being semi-active).

The numbers are somewhat deceiving, as 1) I keep finding university and college articles that have the WP:EDU banner, but not WP:UNI, 2) there are tons of articles yet to be created for historic institutions--we are just slower at article creation than the sports editors, 3) there are also many articles that need to be created for important college presidents/founders that are currently redlinked, 3) we have a huge issue with the lack of WP:UNI banners for articles about academics and other university people. Fixing the latter would give us a better idea of how many existing articles fall under the project (assuming we want those articles under the WP:UNI umbrella). Rublamb (talk) 13:58, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

As someone who primarily edits non-US articles, I have seen no evidence for a large and active wikiproject covering university sports generally. The main sports article for Britain's top sports university was deleted a couple of years ago because nobody was watching it to oppose the deletion. I would therefore be strongly opposed to excluding sports from this wikiproject. There is no other project covering this globally. Robminchin (talk) 14:30, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Tagging a high-level overview article like National Collegiate Athletic Association with WikiProject Higher education is one thing but tagging team season articles like 1903 Kansas Jayhawks football team seems like overkill. The 1903 Kansas article isn't tagged with WikiProject American football or WikiProject Sports either since those are redundant to WikiProject College football ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 14:43, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Robminchin, you're correct that we do not have a large and active WikiProject for university sports generally, but we do have several large and active WikiProjects focusing entirely on American college sports, starting with Wikipedia:WikiProject College football, which is larger and more active than this project. My understanding is that university sports in Britain are largely akin to collegiate club sports in the United States, which are essentially like student activities a la a campus French language or art appreciation club. American college sports are another animal entirely. The top levels of college football and basketball in the US are multi-multi-billion-dollar industries. Many of the student-athletes are now essentially legitimate paid professional athletes; see Student athlete compensation. And for decades, American college sports have had a cultural footprint that extends far beyond the confines of college campuses. In most cases at large American universities, the head football coach is higher paid and much more famous than the university president or anyone else employed by the university. Compare Kirby Smart to Jere Morehead at the University of Georgia. Smart makes $13 million a year to Morehead's $1 million. The Smart article has 2,110 total edits and 554,353 view in the last year. The Morehead article has 91 total edits and 11,199 views in the last year. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:23, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

WikiOriginal-9, I agree. National Collegiate Athletic Association certainly seems like it belongs in the scope of this project, as does Big Ten Conference. Neither of those articles are tagged for this project. So does Michigan Wolverines, the main article covering all intercollegiate sports at the University of Michigan. This was only tagged for this project two days ago by Sdkb. I think those main athletic program articles are a place where this project could really step in and fill a management void, because these articles have never been a strong focus for any of the American college sports WikiProjects. But is Michigan Wolverines football in the scope here? More tenuous for sure. And 1879 Michigan Wolverines football team, 2026 Michigan Wolverines football team, and everything in between? Even more tenuous. J. J. McCarthy? Lloyd Carr? Jweiss11 (talk) 15:34, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Many of these college sports articles have notability issues, relying too much on sources related to the topic. I think you are correct that is something we could help with, whether adding content and sources or merging article back to main articles. Rublamb (talk) 16:31, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Certainly, but the question was about college sports generally, not about specific American college sports. This is an international project with an international scope, and we should not consider removing college sports from that scope based on what happens in a single country. Robminchin (talk) 03:43, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Robminchin, yes, this is an international project covering the entirety of human knowledge. But that doesn't mean we can observe, respect, and reflect obvious differences between things in various counties. The whole of American college sports is probably 100 times larger in terms of depth coverage and notatability than college sports in the rest of the world combined. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:39, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

My view is that these articles are technically within this project's scope, yes, but they should not be its central focus. We need to be cognizant that Wikipedia has a major systemic bias towards sports coverage, and I absolutely would not want to see that manifesting as e.g. this talk page getting overwhelmed with threads about college sports articles. Those discussions are probably better taken up at the talk page of the WikiProject for the relevant sport.

There are already several WikiProjects for college sports listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Sports § College sports. I like the way that baseball does it, where there's a |college=yes under the general WikiProject Baseball banner that displays it as a task force (even though it's technically a project). Task forces for other college sports could be created under the relevant sport WikiProjects if desired. If there is substantial desire to work on college sports articles overall as a set, then perhaps we could create a college sports task force of WikiProject Higher education. Sdkb ^talk 16:16, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

This WikiProject has no clear statement of scope on its main page. Would anyone like to take a stab at drafting one? If not, I'd be happy to. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 06:55, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

@ElKevbo? Rublamb (talk) 13:59, 11 September 2026 (UTC)