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[edit] Documentation

[edit] Purpose

{{infobox University}} — An infobox about a university.

[edit] Usage

[edit] Required fields

{{infobox University
|name=         (Official name, in English [page title])
|established=  (date of establishment/founding)
|city=         (location)
}}

[edit] Optional fields

|country=        (location)
|state=          (state location, interchangable with province)
|province=       (province location, interchangable with state)
|native_name=    (name in native language)
|latin_name=     (name in Latin)
|image=          (full image link)
|motto=          (school motto)
|type=           (Public, Private, 4-year, undergraduate, graduate, etc.)
|endowment=      (endowment value)
|staff=          (total full-time teaching staff/faculty)
|faculty=        (number of faculty members (used for North American universities))
|president=      (President's name)
|vice-president= (Vice-President's name)
|provost=        (Provost's name)
|principal=      (Principal's name)
|rector=         (Rector's name)
|chancellor=     (Chancellor's name)
|vice_chancellor=(Vice-Chancellor's name)
|dean=           (Dean's name)
|head_label=     (generic label for alternate titles for university heads; wikilink to descriptive article)
|head=           (name of the university head; use with head_label)
|students=       (total students - all levels. Use the undergrad/postgrad/doctoral/other fields for more detail)
|undergrad=      (undergraduate enrollment)
|postgrad=       (postgraduate enrollment)
|doctoral=       (doctoral enrollment)
|other=          (other student enrollment)
|profess=        (professional and upgrading program enrollment)
|state=          (U.S. state or similar region)
|campus=         ("Urban", "Rural", etc.)
|free_label=     (use for special requirements)
|free=           (data for free_label)
|sports=         (school sports)
|colors=         (official school colors - American English)
|colours=        (official school colours - International English)
|nickname=       (official nickname or moniker used by groups representing university)
|mascot=         (school mascot)
|fightsong=      (school fight song)
|affiliations=   (affiliations/memberships)
|footnotes=      (footnotes related to the data in the infobox)
|website=        (http://www.school.url)
|address=        (address to school)
|telephone=      (main line to school)
|coor=           (school coordinates)
|logo=           (school logo)

[edit] Empty syntax

{{Infobox_University
|name            = 
|native_name     = 
|latin_name      = 
|image           = 
|motto           = 
|established     = 
|type            = 
|endowment       = 
|staff           = 
|faculty         = 
|president       = 
|provost         = 
|principal       = 
|rector          = 
|chancellor      = 
|vice_chancellor = 
|dean            = 
|head_label      = 
|head            = 
|students        = 
|undergrad       = 
|postgrad        = 
|doctoral        = 
|profess         = 
|city            = 
|state           = 
|country         = 
|campus          = 
|free_label      = 
|free            = 
|colors          = 
|colours         = 
|mascot          = 
|fightsong       = 
|nickname        = 
|affiliations    = 
|footnotes       = 
|website         = 
|address         = 
|telephone       = 
|coor            = 
|logo            = 
}}

[edit] Example

Lund University
Lunds universitet

Latin: Universitas Lundensis or Universitas Gothorum Carolinae. Also the older Academia Carolina lundensis, or Academia Carolina conciliatrix.
Motto	Ad utrumque (Prepared for both)
Established	1666
Type	Public
Rector	Prof. Göran Bexell
Staff	6,000
Undergraduates	42,500
Postgraduates	30,800
Doctoral students	3,200
Location	Lund, Skåne, Sweden
Campus	Both urban and rural.
Affiliations	Universitas 21, EUA
Website	http://www.lu.se/

{{Infobox_University
|name = Lund University
|native_name = Lunds universitet
|latin_name = Universitas Lundensis
''or'' Universitas Gothorum Carolinae.
''Also the older'' Academia Carolina lundensis,
''or'' Academia Carolina conciliatrix.
|image = [[Image:Lund University seal.png|175px|Seal of Lund University]]
|motto = Ad utrumque (''Prepared for both'')
|established = [[1666]]
|type = Public
|endowment = 
|staff = 6,000
|faculty = 
|president = 
|provost =
|principal = 
|rector = Prof. [[Göran Bexell]]
|chancellor = 
|vice_chancellor = 
|dean = 
|head_label = 
|head = 
|students = 
|undergrad = 42,500
|postgrad = 30,800
|doctoral = 3,200
|city = [[Lund]]
|state = [[Skåne]]
|country = [[Sweden]]
|campus = Both urban and rural.
|free_label = 
|free = 
|colors = 
|colours = 
|mascot = 
|fightsong =
|nickname =
|affiliations = [[Universitas 21]], [[EUA]]
|website = http://www.lu.se/
|address =     
|telephone =   
|coor =        
|logo = 
}}

Note: Line broken for readability.

[edit] See also

[edit] History

Created

_→AzaToth 13:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

[edit] Free label

What should be done if free and free_label is to be left out? Just not putting in produces a template message. Putting an empty free_label produces an awkward space. ωhkoh [Т] 15:51, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

I didn't design that field. The best thing to do is either to think of something to put in, or just have the extra TR.

[edit] Horizontal Alignment

Similar to Template:Infobox_University2, I think the titles should be aligned to the left. --Kushboy June 3 11:37 PM EST

Yeah, what the hell is up with some of the fields being indented over a space. It makes it look like things are formatted improperly. I mean everything should be aligned left and and line up so it looks the same the whole way down. -Thebdj 00:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed; the indent makes some sense in a left-justified box, but none where the labels are centred. At this point it just makes sense to remove the indents, I think. /blahedo (t) 05:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I thought the point of the indents is that they are subcategories of staff and students, for example. If you get rid of the indents that will not be obvious at all. David D. (Talk) 05:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that was probably the original point, but it doesn't come across very well. Especially when the top line of the group has no printed value; in the example given on this page, for instance, it almost looks like the undergraduate/graduate counts are part of the "Staff" section. If the headings were left-justified so that the indent was visible there, this would be clearer, too (although I kind of like them centred, so I'm just arguing for removing the indent.) /blahedo (t) 21:48, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about this more, I realised the problem was that if you do have a staff count or a student count, then you probably want the fields indented, but otherwise you don't. So I wrote a subst-able template to help with this (User:blahedo/gapif—the fact that variables are not dynamically scoped means it's not transcludable, but it's a convenient subst) and then wrote a modified version of this infobox, currently residing at User:blahedo/University. I've tested it on a few different universities, and I feel like it looks better on all of them. To test, go to your favourite university page, edit it, and replace "{{Infobox University" with "{{User:blahedo/University", and click Preview. Do not save this version. I have made three changes of substance:

1. Labels are no longer indented, since they are centred.
2. "Staff" and "Student" are only present if they have values.
3. "President", "Chancellor", "Undergraduates", etc are only indented if their corresponding header (staff, students) has a non-empty value.

For the infoboxes that are already using most of the fields, there is very little visible change except that the labels are cleaned up. For those that include only (say) President and Undergraduates, it looks a lot better. Let me know what you think... /blahedo (t) 23:06, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I like your template. I agree it looks better without the indents. It would look even better if it didn't have the embedded wikilinks. --Ttownfeen 03:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

One thing at a time, Tt. Well, I'm not hearing any objections, so I'm going to go ahead and make the change. See you on the other side. /blahedo (t) 07:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I just went through a more or less random sample of thirty or so universities and colleges, and I don't think I broke anything. Still, keep an eye open. /blahedo (t) 08:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Blahedo, that looks a lot better than before. Great job! David D. (Talk) 10:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ditto, thanks for fixing it! --Ttownfeen 15:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faculty

I have never heard the term "faculty" used to refer to the academic staff at a British university. It's very much an American term. "Academic staff" is the usual term used in the UK. -- Necrothesp 23:41, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately the "University" template uses US-specific terms, as well as assuming a structure on the American model; I'd only recommend it for American universities. Template:Infobox British University is available for British universities. TSP 16:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Homepage"

I very much believe the label should be "Website" (or "Official website") instead of "Homepage"; sounds more 'proper' and nowadays is more accurate--'homepage' implies a single page; 'website' implies a multi-page site. Also more consistent with Template:Infobox_City, etc. Looking at 'what links here' I don't think I want to suggest changing the variable name. Niteowlneils 01:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it will be more appropriate to replace "Homepage" with "Website". --BenjaminTsai 06:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Optional fields changes

Stop whatever you're doing. Your new method is horrible, ugly, confusing to new editors, and unnecessary. Please revert your changes and make your proposal on the Talk page. Please read Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates for the myriad reasons calling templates within templates is a bad practice. -- Netoholic @ 22:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Watch Template:Infobox_Film, Template:Infobox band, Template:Web reference, Template:Book reference, Template:infobox Software. All these templates uses optional fields, just as I did with the changes I did.

I know that you should avoid using meta-templates. I just that that the advantages of using {{qif}} to create dynamic templates was considerd so good that it is worth it. Especially at Template: Infobox_Film has their use of optional fields made infobox movie (2) etc. obsolete .You say that the method is horrible. Well, that's your opinion. Ugly? Well, I say the same. Confusing to editors, yes, that is a valid opinon but honestly, I don't think new editors (at least I didn't) wants to edit a template as their first edit. And if they do, they could easily comment what they want to fix on the talk-page and someone else, who do know how to handle these templates, could help out.

And finally, unnecessary. I do NOT agree with you. I strongly disagree actually. There are a lot of value in having one template that can be used in a lot of different pages about universities, especielly for new users. Intstead of trying to find a template sutiable for their article (and there are many university-templates) they could only use Infobox University, without needing to care about empty fields.

I agree that I should've taken these changes up for discussion before making them, but they are now restored and I'm really sorry that I didn't. That was stupid of me, and I apologize. But I think that my changes were good.- David Björklund (talk) 22:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

New users find templates confusing enough, we don't need to make things worse. It's confusing that you're saying you understand we need to avoid using meta-templates, yet are expressly saying you want to go against it.

What is really important is to agree on a strict set of fields which apply to all related pages and implement. Having Infobox University1-6 is not a solution, but then neither is making one template which is amazing complex even to advanced editors like myself. Templates need to be simple to read for everyone, unless you're going to make sure every band, movie, and university article is updated as new data is made available. Don't use any of the If Templates, but rather take each topic area and help decide a core set of fields for all articles. In this case, you're right, we only need one University template on Wikipedia... we just need to decide what is important to document in the infobox, not support one-offs like your method encourages. -- Netoholic @ 22:54, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

When a lot more experienced editors create and use those evil meta-templates (qif) that we are discussing, I thought that they must were okej considerd to use. Especially when they are used in templates that are used a lot more often than Infobox University, such as Template:Main. Also, most of the optional fields were actually not created by a qif-template, but by the CSS class "hiddenstructure". This aproach means that the table rows are hidden by default. Providing a valuable changes the name of that class and the rows are shown. This is demonstrated on the model template {{Infobox}}.

Yes, I agree. We should agree on a set of fields which apply to all related pages and implement those. That was why I started workig on compability with Infobox Universies1,2,3 etc. I thought that the fields used in those could be considerd useful. My mistake, of course that's someting that also should be discussed before I implemented them. I'm really sorry about that.

Still, we disagree. We'll have to continue the debate tomorrow, now it's time for me to sleep.- David Björklund (talk) 23:38, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

hiddenStructure is a dangerous method because it absolutely hinges on that component never changing in the MediaWiki source. If a developer should ever remove or rename that, we're in trouble. It's just another ugly hack which doesn't solve the real problem. More importantly, it only works in the Amethyst, Chick, and Monobook skins. It has problems but it's nowhere near as bad as the "If" and "Boolean" templates. -- Netoholic @ 05:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

That's plain ridiculous. It's the same with the CSS classes Infobox, wikitable so on. In you dear "Avoid using meta-templates" they state that using CSS is a valid alternative. Everything we do rely on the mediawiki-developers don't do crazy things, like removing accepted CSS-classes. I'm not familiar with the skins-problems, but I guess that it's something that should be possible to fix.- David Björklund (talk) 11:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Be careful when you use the term "ridiculous". CSS classed "infobox" and "wikitable" are defined in the MediaWiki:Common.css - a stylesheet "we" (editors) control. hiddenStructure exists only in the MediaWiki source files of skins/amethyst/main.css, skins/chick/main.css, and skins/monobook/main.css. "We" don't control those files, the developers do. The method it's using also produces CSS which doesn't validate, though most browsers don't care. That's why I call it an "ugly hack". My ENTIRE point, though, is that it is more important to talk and come to consensus about which infobox fields are mandatory for all articles in a topic range.... rather than add support for every contingency. -- Netoholic @ 15:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I have made several of the "national" university infoboxes (based on this one), and don't really see the problem with these. It makes for easily used boxes, while at the same time avoiding conflicts over terminology. This particular box is made for American universities and should probably be moved to a name reflecting that (provided a bot can go through all the individual articles using the box), and is not at all suitable for other countries. Having one flexible box sounds nice in theory, but to have to define absolutely everything in the infobox just makes things to complicated for most users. Tupsharru 15:26, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

What are the differences in terminology that have made you create extra templates? -- Netoholic @ 17:02, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Things like:

• title of head, or if to include more than one person in the infobox (see {{Infobox Ancient Scottish University}}, for an example);
• what to call people working at the university ("faculty" is American English and means something else in academic terminology most everywhere else);
• the undergraduate/graduate division (first degrees may take 5, 6 or more years in some countries);
• type (the private/public division is important in the U.S., it seems, but less so in countries where private tertiary institutions are mostly small vocational schools, or where the private/public divide at least is of little significance in how the university is perceived or even financed);
• stuff like colors, sports teams, mascot which seem important at U.S. universities, but not everywhere else.

In some cases, terminology may be applicable but it may just be debatable whether a certain thing is really relevant to include; many old European universities have significant endowments, but are still mainly funded through taxes, and that money may not have the same strategic importance it has to private universities in the U.S. Finally, the fact that many people don't even know that such cultural differences exist will almost surely cause unilateral changes and revert wars. Let's avoid that. --Tupsharru 17:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The title of head field being hardcoded to "President" is incorrect/wrong at multiple North American colleges and universities as well, as a nontrivial number are headed by "Chancellor" or "Provost" or even other titles such as CEO in this era of for-profit universities, especially if the institution is a member university of a university system, where only the university system has a president and the individual universities have a Chancellor or Provost title at that geographic location within the university system. This causes certain university articles such as IPFW to reject the use of either Infobox:University or Infobox:University2 entirely and go with an extremely awkward-to-maintain table to get the labels correct. Indeed, depending on one's perspective, IPFW has either zero or two presidents, because it is a member of both the Indiana University System and the Purdue University System, where each of those university systems has its own president. Neither the University nor the University2 infoboxes support a Chancellor field (as this is what IPFW has) nor support two President fields (as IPFW might be unnaturally contorted to have). I think IPFW is a counter-example of the line of thought that having the title-of-head field hardcoded to "President" makes things easier on us editors. Rejecting the University/University2 infobox makes it much harder to maintain university articles whose institutions do not conform to some infobox authors' own whims (whose bias is probably based on the institution(s) from which they are alumni). —optikos 14:11, 07 January 2006 (CST)

Purdue University's official mascot is different than the moniker of its athletic teams/team-members. Since the 1930s the official mascot is a machine: the Boilermaker Special (which conceptually depicts a 19th-century steam locomotive, although it is based on a combustion-engine-based automotive platform with rubber tires without a steam-engine's boiler anywhere in it, but that irony is mostly beside the point). The athletic teams/team-members (and often the entire student body) are referred to as Boilermakers ever since a mocking 19th-century newspaper article that attempted to insult Purdue University by calling its athletes mere factory laborers that make steam boilers for steam-engines in a local factory. Further complicating this mess is that since the 1940s the Purdue University bookstore devised an unofficial mascot-of-the-bookstore called Purdue Pete, which is what most commonfolk think of as Purdue University's mascot, and which Purdue University "officially" recognizes as a so-called "unofficial" mascot-like-thing. Even further complicating this mess is that in the early 1990s Purdue University "officially" devised a second unofficial inflatable mascot called Rowdy, which Purdue University "officially" recognizes as a so-called "unofficial" mascot-like-thing. So my point is, I think that having the name of the athletic teams/team-members/student-body is an extremely good candidate for a university/college template infobox, such as the University2 template infobox has and it works well for schools where the mascot is the same name as the teams/team-members/student-body. But unfortunately that field is hardcoded to "mascot". Using University2 for Purdue University would lead to some people wanting to incorrectly fill its value in with "Boilermakers" as the moniker of the teams, but conversely other people would want to correctly fill its value in with "Boilermaker Special", which some other readers (who would likely not be well-versed experts on the nuances of these complications) would incorrectly think is the name of Purdue athletic teams/team-members/students (i.e., that these human-beings are all called the "Boilermaker Specials" instead of confining the term to only the machine). It sure would help out diffusing complications with Purdue University if, say, a University2-like template infobox would have the ability to control the field-name that is currently hardcoded to "Mascot" or if, say, a University2-like template infobox would have the ability to optionally have a "Moniker" field in addition to a "Mascot" field for those schools whose moniker for athletes is different than the name of the mascot. Conversely, not all universities in North America (nor worldwide) have an athletics program. Without an athletic program, often such universities lack a mascot (e.g., no equivalent of a Boilermaker Special machine) or a moniker for their student body (e.g., no equivalent of a Boilermakers nickname) or both. My consitent point is that one size definitely does not fit all. [And for those who think that Purdue University made an unnecessary mess of their Boilermaker/BoilermakerSpecial/PurduePete/Rowdy four-way moniker/mascot dichotomy, this is what is meant by the tongue-in-cheek term "Undue Purversity" misspellingly swapping syllables.] — optikos 15:20, 07 January 2006 (CST)

[edit] Other university infoboxes

By the way Netoholic, there aren't merely six university Template:Infobox_s as you claim. There are 42 of them: Template:Infobox_Ancient_Scottish_University, Template:Infobox_Australian_University, Template:Infobox_Austrian_University, Template:Infobox_Belgian_University, Template:Infobox_British_University, Template:Infobox_Czech_University, Template:Infobox_Danish_University, Template:Infobox_Dutch_University, Template:Infobox_Flemish_University, Template:Infobox_German_University, Template:Infobox_Greek_University, Template:Infobox_Hong_Kong_University, Template:Infobox_Hungarian_University, Template:Infobox_Irish_University, Template:Infobox_Israeli_University, Template:Infobox_Italian_University, Template:Infobox_Korean_university, Template:Infobox_Maltese_University, Template:Infobox_Norwegian_University, Template:Infobox_Peruvian_University, Template:Infobox_Polish_University, Template:Infobox_Portuguese_University, Template:Infobox_Romanian_University, Template:Infobox_Russian_University, Template:Infobox_Spanish_University, Template:Infobox_Swedish_University, Template:Infobox_Swedish_University2, Template:Infobox_Swiss_University, Template:Infobox_University, Template:Infobox_University1, Template:Infobox_University2, Template:Infobox_University2_India, Template:Infobox_University2_abroad, Template:Infobox_University3, Template:Infobox_University4, Template:Infobox_University6, Template:Infobox_University_India, Template:Infobox_University_Undergraduate, Template:Infobox_University_abroad, Template:Infobox_University_campus, a true offender Template:Infobox_University_of_Szeged, and Template:Infobox_malaysia_university. Granted some of these are near duplicates of each other. But on the whole, the conclusion can be easily drawn that one size does not fit all. optikos 01:59, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

That is extremely disturbing. I've made some changes to this template to support some of the alternative reasons for these template forks. I'm going to deprecate them, and as I go, I can make additional changes to this template. There may be some growing pains that I've not foreseen (people do strange things in articles sometimes), but we need to get a handle on this. Please report any problems here and I'll fix them as we go. -- Netoholic @ 19:55, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• I have orphaned Template:Infobox University campus. Lovelac7 05:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• It looks as though that template is note a form of Template:Infobox University although the name is similar. We can keep that for now. -- Netoholic @ 06:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Netoholic, thanks for reverting those. Lovelac7 13:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:IrishUniInfoBox needs conversion as well. -- Netoholic @ 21:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:CSU_taxobox, Template:Univ taxobox, Template:USM taxobox, Template:FLSUS taxobox, Template:Oxbridge_College_Infobox, Template:IrishUniInfoBox, Template:Univ taxobox Template:Infobox American Universities are items that need to be dealt with. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 23:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC) Update 17:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

another:Template:University information -- Cpastern 13:11, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Optional fields changes: problems observed

I just tried adding both a chancellor and a president (instead of head) to the Indiana University Bloomington article. President showed up correctly, but chancellor had unintended formatting that was so bad that although the intended text showed up, I removed president from the IUB article. For now as a work-around, I added only a chancellor to Indiana University Bloomington and only a president to the systemwide article Indiana University. IU is organized as a system anchored by two "core"/main campuses: IUB and IUPUI. Each campus has its own chancellor (including even IUB). The IU system as a whole has a president whose office just happens to be located at IUB. Although I have not tried it, this probably would affect those universities abroad that have two or more officers that they would like to see listed in the infobox. —Optikos 14:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Should be all set now. -- Netoholic @ 18:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed that, when I added the president field to the Indiana University article, the President label in the left column was not rendered. —Optikos 14:57, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Should be all set now. -- Netoholic @ 18:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, at some point someone with a bot should change all of the head fields at points of usage of Template:Infobox_University to president fields as this would be correct in a majority of cases. Plus each alumnus or employee of a university that views their particular university article can overtly notice "Hey, we have a chancellor not a president." and fix it under the new field-name scheme. Currently, the head field just drops out without displaying as president (or as any other title). Such silent omission will take longer for people to notice, I fear. —Optikos 14:57, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I've run a bot, changing all occurrences of the older parameter names ("head" is now "president", homepage>website, etc.). As best as I can see, all of them are changed, so I've removed support for those legacy items from the template. -- Netoholic @ 18:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Could you make an option for "rector magnificus" as title of head? I also think it looks better having the name of the university inside the box, rather than on top of it. Tupsharru 19:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

There is an optional parameter called "rector". "rector magnificus" redirects to Rector, and seems to be less frequently used than simply "Rector". As for the location of the name of the university, the reason it is on top is because I set it up as a table caption. It's better for people with disabilities who use screen readers; see Wikipedia:Accessibility. -- Netoholic @ 20:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Could we consider adding a provost option in addition to chancellor? Some universities (such as Indiana University) now use provost for campus heads. JACooks 18:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faculty again

In American colleges and universities, "staff" denotes all the employees, including janitors, food service employees, security, and so on. It is confusing and inaccurate to have the label staff followed by the number of faculty. I assume this is why other editors have created new university infoboxes. -Acjelen 21:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Nobody really cares how many janitors a school has. The term "Staff" is a compromise. You can be as clear as you want when you define the parameter. Something like "staff= 200 professors, 50 adminstrative" would be fine. -- Netoholic @ 22:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The term used here in Australia is "academic staff". Alternatively, "teaching staff" will do as well. CW 14:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy with "academic staff" from a UK perspective. I'm not sure if "teaching staff" is necessarily equivalent - as most major UK universities have a strong focus on research, there may be academic staff who do not actively teach. TSP 18:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Why is the staff label above the president? That seems rather counterintuitive. Also, the numbers and data items don't always lign up. Noetic Sage 22:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] addition of new optional field

At the United States Military Academy, United States Naval Academy, United States Air Force Academy, United States Coast Guard Academy, and United States Merchant Marine Academy the head of the school is called the Superintendent. I realize that this is only 5 schools, but these are U.S. federal universities and probably get a lot of page hits. Since this template is used by a lot pages, I didn't want to just be bold and do it without first discussing it here. Will this be a problem? --rogerd 01:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I added a head/head_label combination of parameters to handle one-offs (or five-offs). Take a look at this example. -- Netoholic @ 02:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I see you updated the USMA and the USAFA. I fixed the USNA. The USCGA and USMMA don't have infoboxes yet. As soon as I get around to getting the image and info needed, I will add it to them (if someone else doesn't beat me to it). Thanks again. --rogerd 03:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] head_label

When looking at the html source of Dartmouth College I see:

<tr class="hiddenStructure{{{head_label}}}">
<th style="padding-left: 1em;"></th>
<td style="padding-left: 1em;"></td>
</tr>

Is this intentional and correct? --Adrian Buehlmann 13:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

In general, yes, so that institutions whose chief officer is not named president, chancellor, dean, etc that have explicit called-out labels. Similarly, this is also useful for institutions that have two chief officers (such as a for-profit university, which may very well have a corporate CEO as well as a chief academic officer analogous to a president in a traditional university) Which portion do you think is unintentional and incorrect? —Optikos 15:36, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:FLSUS taxobox

You guys should also be aware of the Template:FLSUS taxobox. I'm not sure if other states university systems have implemented this style of infobox, but it's unique features should be incorporated if possible. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 04:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

That extra bit of navigation seems to duplicate the intent of Template:State University System of Florida. -- Netoholic @ 04:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh I agree, but I'm sure someone will be annoyed if features of the old template are removed for the sake of consistency. I just wanted to make you guys aware of it and potentially incorporate it for other large school systems. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faculty entry

I added an optional entry for faculty within the infobox after there have been complaints about the wording between "staff" and "faculty," especially for North American universities. Pentawing^Talk 03:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Type, School type, Type of institution

I notice in the January 2006 history for this template that the label that corresponds to the "|type=" field of this template went from "Type" to "School type" to "Type of institution". What was wrong with simply "Type"? We do not have "of institution" on any of the other labels, such as neither "Endowment of instutition" nor "Established date of institution" nor "Institution established" nor "Name of institution" nor "Website of institution" nor... need I go on? The "Type of institution" needlessly lengthens that label so that it line-wraps to two lines in many articles where the listed type(s) all fit on one line. I would like to shorten it back to simply "Type" on 15 February 2006 unless there too many objections appended below. Optikos 04:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree shorter is better in an info box. David D. (Talk) 04:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commas and states

Could someone put in the code and such to have a comma appear after a state name as it looks awkward as Akron, Ohio United States. I am not very expirienced with templats so I would apprecitate one of yall doing it. Thank you. American Patriot 1776 22:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The prevailing convention (recently at least) is to have it appear as Akron, OH USA via

 |city=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]
 |state=[[Ohio|OH]]
 |country=[[USA]]

Given that convention isn't Akron, OH USA the punctuation scheme that complies with generally accepted conventions in the English language? If we change that format, I would recommend complying with an official widely-accepted reference, such as a Wikimedia meta-page policy or postal regulations or a manual of style such as Strunk & White, Fowler, UofChicago, or Associated Press. For example, the city, ST USA format nearly complies with postal regulations, except that there is supposed to be a line-wrap between the ST abbreviation and the country name, which we have eliminated here for brevity. Optikos 20:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Mascot"

Shouldn't "mascot" be changed to "nickname"? I don't know of many schools that are identified by their mascot, but I know plenty that are identified by their nickname. Taking Harvard University for example, instead of saying that's that school's mascot is John Harvard, it's more common to say that Harvard's athletic teams are nicknamed the Crimson. Now for Harvard, this probably isn't a big deal, but it is very much so for those American universities where athletics are a big deal (the Big Ten and SEC schools and whatnot). I'm also assuming that mascots are pertinent only to universities in the United States. Universities outside the United States don't have mascots and nicknames, do they? --Ttownfeen 18:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Here are some finer points to consider:

• Purdue University has both a moniker and a nearly completely separate mascot. The moniker is Boilermakers. The official mascot is a faux Victorian-era steam locomotive, called the Boilermaker Special.
• Some schools have a generic moniker for the team(-members) and a narrower very specific name for their mascot: Ball State University's moniker is the Cardinals, but the mascot is specifically Charlie Cardinal; IUPUI's moniker is the Jaguars, but the mascot is Jinx, the Jaguar; IPFW's moniker is the Mastodons, but the mascot is Don, the Mastodon.
• Still others are as you describe, where the university has only a moniker for its teams with no separate mascot at all, such as Indiana University Bloomington's Hoosiers.

I have always wanted to see two separate fields: one for moniker and one for mascot. I strongly recommend against calling that field "nickname" because "nickname" invites all sorts of informal, unofficial, colloquial information that would be a chronic battle to keep out of each article. Moniker sounds official and is the most precise term. Furthermore, nickname is usually given by others to oneself, whereas moniker can be given to oneself as an official pseudonym.

If there is no significant preponderance of objection appended below, then on Sunday 05 March 2006, I will add a Moniker optional field. After that change, all three cases that I itemize above can be addressed with ease. (Let's hold off adding it until others have a chance to contribute their ideas and opinions.) Optikos 20:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The essence of what you're saying is that American universities usually have an alternate name for groups representing the institution and a seperate mascot representing the school. I'm not denying that at all in my argument; in fact, I completely agree. What I'm saying that for most universities the official nickname/moniker/team name/whatever is more notable than the mascot. That Alabama is nicknamed the Crimson Tide is more "important" (in terms of what should be in an infobox) than that their mascot is an elephant named Big Al.

Your claim varies widely by institution. There is no "typically" or "usually" at all among USA higher-education institutions regarding moniker, nickname, or number of colors. In fact if anything is common among all universities and colleges in the USA is that each institution considers it an act of its autonomy to declare whatever it so desires in these regards as a matter of school spirit. My favorite example of this institutional matter of pride is Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, whose "mascot" is a memoriam to a beloved graduate nun whose surname was Pomeroy and thus the athletic teams carry the moniker Pomeroys, whereas members of the student body are known as Woodsies (and not Pomeroys). You seem to be driving toward complete elimination of the mascot field that is already in wide use. I disagree with that revocation of expressivity for institutions that have a beloved mascot that differs radically from its beloved moniker, such as Purdue University in whose article there is a chronic battle to keep the moniker and mascot straight and true to official fact as opposed to colloquial perception. We need more flexibility in the ability accomodate wide per-institution variance in these matters, not less. The existing optional mascot field and a new optional moniker/nickname field accomplishes that needed flexibility. —Optikos 03:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually I think that it is worth mentioning that the official mascot differs drastically from the official moniker, because this could easily be a point of confusion. For example, with University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, it is important to instruct everyone that the moniker/nickname is The Fighting Irish (and that it would be quite incorrect to call them the Leprochans) and that the mascot is called The Leprechaun (and that it would be quite incorrect to call the little guy the Irish Fighter). Anything that is not a animal mascot and a moniker that is the same animal pluralized is worth noting obviously, clearly, and concisely so that the reader does not investigate the matter for tens of minutes to find whether the mascot is the same as the moniker. Just because the moniker is more "important" for one institution does not give that institution any right to force its will on all other institutions. Just because an institution just happened to choose an animal mascot with a pluralized-animal moniker does not give that institution the right to force its will on all other institutions. Let the article for each institution decide its moniker/mascot/color matters for itself as a local matter, given the proper tools/structure: both a mascot optional field and a nickname/moniker optional field. —Optikos 03:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a standardized template, then? --Ttownfeen 06:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Where "that" equals "at least one optional field anywhere in the template", some may view any form of optionality as deviating from a strictly-enforced boilerplate. Conversely, this template in the latter part of 2005 exploded into at least 42 Template:*Univeristy* templates, each accomodating a minor variation. This was viewed (correctly in my opinion) as a very bad thing. Netoholic did a wonderful job of marshalling all of those into this single template with optional fields to accomodate institutions both in North America as well as worldwide whose head-officer does not have the title president, for example. Among the private schools, endowment was important. Among the British Commonwealth, the spelling of colour/color was important. For participants in this thread, using the label Nickname instead of Mascot is important in the articles that you all are editing. Again my point is that one size does not fit all, but rather one template can accomodate the minor variations while still providing a majority-similar presentation of information. —Optikos 01:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, nicknames is the most appropriate term, in my opinion. Historically, most traditional nicknames have been given by outsiders. Purdue did not choose to be called the Boilermakers (I believe your or someone upthread said it started a ephitet), nor did Alabama choose Crimson Tide (the name was started by a sportswriter and gained ground over a long period of time). These names have since been adopted by the universities mentioned and others not. I think instead of "moniker", we should use "official nickname". That would stymie off vandals with unoffical nickames. --Ttownfeen 06:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with "Official nickname" is that it is too long. It will typically wrap onto two lines (or perhaps worse with & nbsp; bloat the width of the whole infobox. Rarely would the official nickname be long enough to wrap onto two lines to take advantage of that otherwise wasted vertical space. —Optikos 03:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

How about the label having the text "Nickname" that is actually a link to an article that explains the concept of a college/university official nickname for its athletics programs (and typically its student body as a school-spirit technique). (Does that article already exist?) This infobox already has established precedent of labels that are links to articles. That would probably be enough to defensibly fend off arch-rival vandals from slipping in insults right ahead of (or after) the big game. —Optikos 03:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking that the embedded links should be removed from the template, but that's a whole other can of worms. All this debating is giving me a headache, and I agree with your compromise anyway, so I relent. I would be satisfied with an optional field for "Nickname" with a link embedded. --Ttownfeen 06:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, at first I was slightly surprised by some labels being highlighted as links and some not. But then I began sort of liking it. In fact, its not the links that bothered me, but the variation that some labels are links and some are not. I think that I would prefer that they all be links to supporting articles. For example, I think that the Type label would be especially nice to have an article that at least lists and preferably explains how universities/colleges are categorized: private non-profit versus public non-profit versus private for-profit versus publicly-traded for-profit; liberal arts versus Morrill Act "argriculture and mechanics" land grant (e.g., Texas A&M; Purdue) versus Northwest Territory (USA: OH, IN, IL, MI, WI) land-grant; all-male versus all-female versus coeducational; historically all-black versus historically all-caucasian; and so forth. But that is a topic for a different day for me. —Optikos 01:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Width

If it's okay, I'd like to reduce the width of the template from 25 "em" to 20. I would be bold and do it now, but this is a template that would affect hundreds of pages, so I'm hesitant to piss anybody off. --Ttownfeen 17:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

It's been a week and no one has objected, so I reduced the width to 20. --Ttownfeen 01:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rector, etc.

Someone please fix the fact that Rector, President, and possibly the others that correspond all have the name of the person indented. It looks ugly and non-uniform. --Cromwellt|Talk 16:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. I think the indent makes sense for the student/undergrad/postgrad situation, but I don't think it's necessary to indicate that the head of an institution is a subcategory of staff. And I do think that less indents look better. Cpastern 15:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Was any action ever taken on this? It seems the field continues to be indented, and I agree that it doesn't look right at all. I nearly changed it myself but I wanted to check here first. --SuperNova |T|C| 06:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I adjusted the template so that there isn't an indent. Cpastern 18:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Campus label

I'd like to suggest that the campus label not be a required field. I've been working on a lot of university pages for universities I haven't visited, and there's most of the time no easy way to tell what the built environment around the campus is. I also don't think that it's really essential information. It is nice though, so I think it's fine as an optional field, but I don't think it's worth all the empty spaces in so many infoboxes. Cpastern 20:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Done, if there's any objections it can be changed back (it'll just result in the ugly {{{campus}}} showing up in articles). —Locke Cole • t • c 20:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alumni

Would anyone mind if I added a field for the number of alumni, just as we have a field for the number of students? Djegan

How would you establish such a figure? Does any university keep an accurate record of every one of its former students? I am reasonably confident that my university would not know if I had died.... TSP 18:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Certainly all universities tend to keep a record of the degrees they have confered, and many do their best to determine how many are dead, etc. For instance in the Republic of Ireland, universities keep records for the electoral roll of Seanad Eireann - the upper house of the national parliament. I propose that a alumni field would be optional. Djegan 20:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Mmm. But that only applies to members of two universities in the world, that I'm aware of. Certainly other universities would LIKE to keep track of their graduates; but unless they have any legal reason to, this largely consists of hoping that alumni will write in with news. I wouldn't expect most universities to have anything approaching an accurate figure - probably barely more accurate than (average lifespan - 20) * size of the university, which the reader could work out for themselves. I don't have a problem as such with this being in the template; but I think that a vanishingly small proportion of the world's universities will be able to give anything like an accurate figure, making it of dubious usefulness as a comparison fact to include in the template. TSP 03:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. While I would concur that few if any universities would claim to have precision records regarding their living alumni population, it is foolish to think they don't have some modestly accurate idea. There is a great deal of money in keeping track of people to ask for donations later. For example, my own alma mater has this information readily available: Boston University Degrees Awarded and Number of Alumni Pjorg 23:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, fair enough; though we can only guess whether "available addresses" bears any realistic approximation to the real number of living alumni. Is it actually a useful thing to know? Does this fact really tell you anything about the university that the number of students doesn't? I suspect that the major thing it tells you is how enthusiastic the university's alumni relations department is at making sure people stay on its mailing lists. I still think it's the case that only universities legally obliged to keep records of alumni will be able to provide a meaningful figure; for all others, it's "number of alumni we are still in contact with", which is dependent on so many factors that it doesn't seem to be a useful indicator of anything except itself, which is not particularly interesting. TSP 23:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

On reflection, I'd have to agree. The situations where this information would be useful are few and far between, and anyone who needs it probably knows right where to find it anyway. Certainly it doesn't merit the prominence afforded by a spot in the infobox. Pjorg 00:40, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Australian University

FYI, the Australian University articles have been switched over to this template and I've listed the Australian Infobox University for deletion (WP:TFD) -- CHANLORD ^[T]/_[C] 03:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Campus field - Urban

Please note, if you are going to make "Urban" in the campus field a link, you should point the link to Urban area instead of Urban. Urban area is the article you want, Urban is a disambiguation page. Also, can the template be changed to bring it up to date, or are these links done by hand afterwards? -Mulder416 02:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Student body president

I disagree with the recent addition of the student body president and vice-president to the infobox. For one, I don't think it's infobox worthy information, and I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to keep adding every possible tag. Secondly, they aren't consistant with the formatting of the other labels. So we have head_label and latin_name but "student body president" Cpastern 15:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that the're not infobox worthy - even if 'president' is, I really don't think that 'vice-president' is. My University's student organisation didn't even have such a position as 'vice-president' when I was there; a few years earlier, they'd had three vice-presidents. Even if the position does exist, there's no guarantee that it's the most notable (rather than, say, a Treasurer). I might just about accept "student body president" (that isn't a term that would ever be used in a UK university, but I'm assuming that it's equivalent to the Students' Union President in a UK institution?), even though it will change every year so be almost guaranteed to get out of date; but "vice president" really doesn't seem to be guaranteed to transfer internationally. TSP 18:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - I will remove them --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 14:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm no template hacker - could someone skilled at editing remove this thing?

[edit] Template items to be deleted

This is intended as a holding pen for old University templates that have been deprecated and delinked so items can be mass listed at WP:TFD rather than as they are accomplished. The numbers indicates the number of items using the template. Please update this list as templates are delinked. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Items to be addressed

1. Template:Durham college ~10
2. Template:Oxbridge College Infobox - ~20 Constituent college
3. Template:Oxford College Infobox - 25 Constituent college

[edit] Deleted items

Templates for deletion - April 25

1. Template:UC taxobox 17:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
2. Template:Infobox Israeli University 17:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Template:Infobox malaysia university 17:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
4. Template:Infobox University Undergraduate 17:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
5. Template:Infobox Czech University 18:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Template:Infobox University Undergraduate 18:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
7. Template:Infobox German University 21:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
8. Template:Infobox Russian University 21:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
9. Template:Infobox Greek University 21:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
10. Template:Infobox Hong Kong University 21:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleted based on vote at TFD

1. Template:Infobox British University 15:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
2. Template:Infobox Dutch University 15:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
3. Template:CSU taxobox 15:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
4. Template:Univ taxobox 15:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
5. Template:Infobox Ancient Scottish University 18:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Template:Infobox European Universities 18:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
7. Template:Infobox college 21:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
8. Template:USM taxobox 22:26, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
9. Template:FLSUS taxobox 17:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
10. Template:Infobox Danish University 17:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
11. Template:Infobox University India 21:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
12. Template:Infobox Peruvian University 18:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
13. Template:Infobox Polish University - depopulated, informed creator about likely deletion
14. Template:Infobox American Universities 20:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
15. Template:University information 20:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
16. Template:Infobox Italian University 19:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
17. Template:Infobox Irish University - Deleted by vote at separate TFD
18. Template:Infobox Korean university 15:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Infobox Irish University

Template:Infobox Irish University has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. _→AzaToth 19:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 20em or 23em

I say 23em, looks better in general. _→AzaToth 17:59, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Width

What do the other editors think would the optimal width for the template? I say it should be narrow (say 20em), but AzaToth prefers a wider template (in this case, 23em). I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a considerable difference in width.

--Ttownfeen 18:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I think 20em is to slim, in my eyes 23em looks pefect, not to slim and not to wide. _→AzaToth 18:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

20 is too slim, and with longer entries - see Columbia University - there are too many lines and the infobox become harder to read and unneccessarily long. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 14:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps paring down the information provided in the infobox (whose purpose is to provide information consiseley) would solve your problem in the Columbia article and others instead of widening the template in pages where widing the box would create empty space in the template as the text is off-centered. I don't know...an infobox being too long doesn't seem to me to be as unappealing as one too wide. --Ttownfeen 22:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no opinion on 20 v 23em for the width, but I think the amount of information listed under "Campus" on Columbia University is a bit excessive. Most schools I've seen just list suburban/urban/rural, etc., not the area in acres and square km of each campus. —Jnk^[talk] 00:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm running into a problem especially with foreign universities where websites are too long for the width specified. See University of Venice University of Urbino University of Siena University of Pisa Pisa Sant'Anna University of Ferrara Foreigners University of Perugia University of Salerno University of Perugia. There is also a problem for english subsections of foreign websites, which tend to be longer addresses. I know that long addresses can be hidden but I personally do not want to have to go through these and other pages. Also looking through the depricated infoboxes, nearly all prefer the larger size. I'm going to change it to 22 as a comprimise for the moment rather than the too slim 20. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The problems I run into with the widened width are related to white space (or grey space, in this specific instance). See University of Alabama and Vanderbilt University to see what I'm refering to. --Ttownfeen 18:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

If there was a way to adjust the alignment of the text, or something to that effect, I'd have not objection to any reasonable changes to width. --Ttownfeen 18:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What to do about constituent colleges

AFAIK there are three universities with individual templates for it's constituent colleges. Template:Durham college, Template:Oxbridge College Infobox and Template:Oxford College Infobox. Some of these have unique fields that make them difficult to convert to this infobox and I personally do not think that they should be converted. The main university pages have the updated infobox and these colleges should probably be left as they are. See Colleges of the University of Oxford for an example. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 03:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been converting the Durham colleges ones as I came to them, for example College of St Hild and St Bede. I think the Durham box is kind of ugly and not formatted well. But the Oxbridge and Oxford have those scarf colors, which is out of our infobox league. I have no problem with any of them staying, really. Cpastern 17:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Are we okay to use these templates then? I was going to add in the last few Template:Oxford College Infobox (mainly PPHs), but the template is marked as deprecated? Mtpt 19:44, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

From the discussion above I'd say the balance of opinion is that we need to retain a separate template for constituent colleges as opposed to universities. However perhaps there'd be a case for migrating Oxford college infoboxes to the more general Oxbridge template (after adding any missing fields of course). New Oxford infoboxes should use the Oxbridge template IMHO. Any thoughts? --Ed hazell 14:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer a generalized constituent college infobox rather than separate items for each. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 19:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have made use of Infobox University for both United College, St Andrews and St Mary's College, St Andrews and it has worked well enough. Davidkinnen 18:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polish University

I don't mind at all, in fact I'm quite happy someone finally decided to create one size fits all template for it. However, I must say I liked the {{Infobox Polish University}}'s design more. Is there any chance to make this new template less transparent? //Halibutt 05:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Please put in your specific suggestion about what you like about the polish infobox so that it can be discussed. Also, what do you mean by less transparent? There has been a long overwrought discussion about using meta templates to hide parameters that are not being used. This is what has allowed for standardization of the infobox. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 13:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

By transparent I mean lacking any colours. What I like about the Polish infobox is the colours, the blue and grey seem quite a decent option. As to the transparent (hideable) fields, I love them all, it's only some eye-catcher that's lacking in the current design IMO. //Halibutt 19:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortuately, I think that the very light pastel background is going to stay because there are so many different color logos, and the blue and gray, while somewhat neutral will clash with some entries. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 19:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

In my honest opinion the pastel background clashes with all of them, as most logos have either no background at all - or a white background. And white background with some pastel sticking out looks... bad. However, I mean not the pastel background beneath the logos (which is bad), but the background beneath the text fields. //Halibutt 17:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the color scheme being discussed (University of Illinois at Chicago), but I find it much nicer than Template:Infobox_University. It gives a crisper feel to the article. --Eliyak 20:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping values from deleted templates

I see that the Alumni variable (which was proposed above, but I think was generally thought to be a bad idea) has appeared as a result of the Irish University template being merged in.

To an extent, I think this bears on a wider policy decision: do we want this template to be as versatile as possible, allowing different universities in different countries to use different subsets of its fields? Or do we want to limit it mostly to the most important and universal features, so that universities will tend to have similar data in their infoboxes and can be more easily compared? My inclination is towards the latter, but others may feel differently. TSP 15:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I think "important and universal features" will be quite difficult to define in many cases, for instance "endowment" variable will have limited usage outside the United States. Similarily the name of heads of universities vary widely for countries and even within countries, yet we have no less that eight such variables in this template! Indeed we even have one variable for "colors" and one for "colours"? In the end if it is to be a universal template then its going to be a compromise otherwise we might as well go back to the old system of a different template for every country/issue, anything else is bogus. Djegan 16:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Djegan. Some country infoboxes were "compromised" when they were consolidated into the larger template and it would be a disservice to exclude the information that is locally useful, relevant and applicable for the small inconvenience of removing inapplicable field. However alumni does not appear to have ever been part of the Irish Unibox and was likely a later addition by an intersted party.--Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC) Updated 02:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Professional students and addresses

Someone added "profess" to the empty syntax, but it hasn't actually been added to the template. I support adding this field, since there are thousands of community colleges both in the US and abroad with both professional/continuing ed and undergraduate degree students whose infoboxes would be much clearer with its inclusion.

However, I don't support the address and telephone number fields. One of the things wikipedia is not is a phonebook: Wikipedia: What wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information see numbers 6 and 7, not a phonebook, not a directory. Cpastern 18:23, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wiki-only table and cleanup

I propose replacing the template with the following wiki only code:

{| class="infobox" cellspacing="2" style="border-color:{{{border_color}}}; width:{{{box_width|22em}}}; text-align:left; font-size:{{{font_size|90%}}};"
{{#if:{{{back_color|}}}|
{{!}}-
{{!}} colspan="2" style="text-align:center; font-size:1.25em; color:{{{name_color}}}; background-color:{{{back_color}}};" {{!}} '''{{{name}}}{{#if:{{{native_name|}}}|<br /><small>{{{native_name|}}}</small>}}'''
{{!}}-|
{{!}}+ style="text-align: center; font-size: 1.25em;" {{!}} '''{{{name}}}{{#if:{{{native_name|}}}|<br /><small>{{{native_name|}}}</small>}}'''}}
{{#if:{{{image|}}}{{{latin_name|}}}|
{{#if:{{{border_color|}}}|
<!-- insert blank line with border color -->
{{!}}-
{{!}} colspan="2" style="line-height:0.1em; color:{{{border_color}}}; background-color:{{{border_color}}};" {{!}} .;
{{!}}-}}
{{!}} colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" {{!}} {{{image}}}{{#if:{{{latin_name|}}}|{{#if:{{{image|}}}|<br />}}[[Latin language|Latin]]: ''{{{latin_name|}}}''}}
{{#if:{{{border_color|}}}|
<!-- insert blank line with border color -->
{{!}}-
{{!}} colspan="2" style="line-height:0.1em; color:{{{border_color}}}; background-color:{{{border_color}}};" {{!}} .;
{{!}}-| <!-- else just draw line -->
----}}
}}
|-
{{#if: {{{motto|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Motto]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{motto}}}}}
|-
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[date of establishment|Established]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{established}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{type|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Type 
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{type}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{endowment|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Financial endowment|Endowment]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{endowment}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{staff|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Staff 
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{staff}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{rector|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Rector]] 
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{rector}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{chancellor|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Chancellor (education)|Chancellor]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{chancellor}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{president|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[University President|President]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{president}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{provost|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Provost (education)|Provost]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{provost}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{principal|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Principal (university)|Principal]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{principal}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{vice_chancellor|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Vice-Chancellor]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{vice_chancellor}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{dean|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Dean (education)|Dean]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{dean}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{head_label|}}}{{{head|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} {{{head_label|}}}
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{head}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{faculty|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Faculty (university)|Faculty]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{staff|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{faculty|}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{students|}}}{{{enrollment|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Students
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{enrollment|}}}{{{students|}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{undergrad|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Undergraduate]]s
{{!}} {{#if:{{{students|}}}{{{enrollment|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{undergrad}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{postgrad|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Graduate school|Postgraduate]]s
{{!}} {{#if:{{{students|}}}{{{enrollment|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{postgrad}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{doctoral|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Doctorate|Doctoral students]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{students|}}}{{{enrollment|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{doctoral}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{profess|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Professional|Professional students]]
{{!}} {{#if:{{{students|}}}{{{enrollment|}}}| style="padding-left: 1.25em;color:{{{value_color}}};"}} {{!}} {{{profess}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{alumni|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Alumnus|Alumni]]
{{!}} style="padding-left: 1.25em;" {{!}} {{{alumni}}}}}
|- 
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Location
| {{{city}}}, {{{state|}}}{{{province|}}}{{#if:{{{state|}}}{{{province|}}}| }}{{{country}}} {{#if:{{{coor|}}}|({{{coor}}})}}
|-
{{#if:{{{address|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Address
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{address}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{telephone|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Telephone
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{telephone}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{campus|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Campus
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{campus}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{free_label|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} {{{free_label}}}
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{free|}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{colors|}}}{{{colours|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[School colors|Colo{{#if:{{{colours|}}}|u}}rs]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{colors|}}}{{{colours|}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{nickname|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Athletic nickname|Nickname]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{nickname}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{mascot|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Mascot]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{mascot}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{affiliations|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} Affiliations
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{affiliations}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{website|}}}|
! style="color:{{{label_color}}};" {{!}} [[Website]]
{{!}} style="color:{{{value_color}}};" {{!}} {{{website}}}}}
|-
{{#if:{{{logo|}}}|
{{!}} colspan="2" {{{logo}}}}}
|- 
| colspan="2" style="font-size: smaller;color={{{value_color}}" |{{{footnotes|}}}
|}<noinclude>
{{esoteric}}
[[Category:Templates using ParserFunctions|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Infobox templates|University]]
[[ko:Template:대학 정보]]
[[fr:Modèle:Université]]
</noinclude>

It is exactly the same infobox (except you can use province or state, and Alumni is lower down and does not depend on the staff variable), but with the following optional formatting options:

• box_width
• font_size
• border_color
• name_color
• back_color
• label_color
• value_color

The existing template is quite a bit more difficult to follow because comments are needed to split out onto different lines. If you oppose some or all of the new options, but would agree to removing the HTML tags for a wiki-only table, please specify your preferences. --Usgnus 02:16, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Here is the test template User:Usgnus/Template and example User:Usgnus/Sandbox. --Usgnus 02:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm no template editor, but that looks much easier to edit when need be. Alumni should be removed though. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

In the strongest terms, I think alumni has to go back. No formal decision was made to remove it. If we are going to "integrate" other templates into this one then removing information is just a bogus way of doing things. Its not unreasonable. Djegan 17:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Can alumni be covered by using free label and free? If so, that might be sufficent, especially as I can't see any template using the alumni parameter at the moment. Regards, MartinRe 18:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Several of the Irish university articles use the alumni variable and by just unilaterally deleting the variable this information is no longer displayed. The free label should be retained for the occassional usage rather than the same usage in several tables, additionally the alumni varable should be displayed near the student/faculty/staff numbers in order to have consistancy. Djegan 18:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

i've looked at TCD and the NUI's, but can't find it used there (as they'd be the most appropiate, due to seanad elections, etc) Do you have an example of where it is used now, so I can see what it looks like? PS something put forward for discussion can't really be described as "unilateral"! Regards, MartinRe 18:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Examples: Dublin City University, National University of Ireland, University of Dublin, University of Limerick, Dublin Institute of Technology, Queen's University of Belfast and University of Ulster. Djegan 18:35, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

(de-indented) Ah, typical Irish luck, the first four I picked didn't have it, but yep, the others all do. In that case, I would also support the retention of the alumni variable (or oppose its removal). Regards, MartinRe 18:43, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps moving "Alumni" from its present position just before faculty to after the enrollment fields (i.e., just after doctoral) would make it more palatable.-- Usgnus 19:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I dont mind where the variable is exactly located as long as it is in the same general area as the other enrollment and staffing variables. Djegan 19:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm also neutral on the exact positioning of the field, but in the general area as your suggested above sounds fine to me. Regards, MartinRe 20:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks like I owe Djegan an apology for removing the alumni field. I looked around and didn't see that it was being used when it clearly was. I had supported Djegan earlier when integrating the alumni field (despite my confusion) when it is used by several universities. It should be lower though. Following up on the other discussion by Cpastern I agree that address and telephone are not relevant enough to be be included even though they were heavily used by Polish universities. They need to be fixed if this template is going to be migrated. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm encountering a number of colleges and universities with "professional" in their infobox. This should be put into the new infobox. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 13:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you want me to add profess to the existing template as well, or should I convert to the new wiki-only one now? And since the addresses are part of the existing template, they can be removed before or after migration. -- Usgnus 15:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I converted the template to the new wiki-only table. I spot checked a few universities, and so far so good. -- Usgnus 17:54, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spacing quirks

On Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, there is extra indent room in front of the "President" and "undergraduates" data cells. I figured out why - it's because they are indented as in an outline. "President" comes under "Staff" and "Undergraduates" comes under "Students". Unfortunately, this looks weird if you don't have more than just the one subitem. If there any way that a noindent flag could be added? Does the wikicode #if support boolean logic?

I looked around the ACC and this makes the formatting look bad on Clemson, Duke, and Miami.

You have to see one like GT or NCSU where both undergrads and grads are listed to even figure out what is going on.

Anyway, would it be possible for someone who knows wikicode a heckuva lot better than I do to make a way to remove the indentation?

BigDT 16:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

We've discussed this a bit before in the Template talk:Infobox University#Rector, etc. section and I agree that it looks very weird for the names of various institution heads to be indented under staff. I think it's okay for the undergrad/postgrad/doctoral/profess fields though. It just seems that a few more of us need to learn to edit templates. . .

If noone who knows about templates wants to do the edits, maybe somebody could at least give us newer-bies some advice on where to start? Is m:Help:Template good or can you recommend some other page? Cpastern 19:09, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Check out User:Usgnus/Template and User:Usgnus/Sandbox. -- Usgnus 18:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of spacing quirks, something weird is happening with the location field. See University of the Philippines, Los Baños, where there's a line break between Los and Banos. I had noticed this at least once before on another page. Cpastern 17:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, fixed. -- Usgnus 18:18, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Establishment date/category synchronization

I have been working on standardizing the categories within Category:Educational institutions by year of establishment, by creating and/or updating the appropriate century, decade, and year categories/subcategories - see for example Category:Educational institutions established in 1998. Is there any simple way of getting the Template:Infobox University to magically add the Category:Educational institutions established in year-whatever tag to the articles that it is invoked upon? j-beda 16:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be quite simple, except for the fact that the variable in question ("established") is often used for non year data, see for example Harvard University, and Queen's University of Belfast. Therefore it would not be easy to extract the relevant data, the year. In any case I am not sure what effect such a category change may have on wikipedias stability and would be obviously something to bear in mind. Djegan 16:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

That was what I thought. Additionally even if it is just a year, most of the time it is entered as a link to the year article rather than just as a plain number: [[1967]] rather than 1967. j-beda 18:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This could do the trick: <includeonly>{{#ifexist:Category:Educational institutions established in {{{established|xxxx}}}|[[Category:Educational institutions established in {{{established|xxxx}}}]]}}</includeonly> -- Usgnus 16:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

If I read that correctly it should place the article in the category only if the category exists, which it would not if "established" is not a proper year. As a bonus it puts the article in the xxxx category if no ("established") data is entered. Any ideas on how to turn [[1967]] into 1967? j-beda 18:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I see that Category:Educational institutions established in xxxx is being proposed for deletion or renaming to something more appropriate like "... established in an unknown year", but that should not significantly impact Usgnus' suggestion. j-beda 18:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't do this. There is a definite benefit to having editors see the category(ies) explicitly. -- Usgnus 19:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Additionally a lot of universities have more than one establishment date. For instance:

The University of Manchester is a merger of what was known as the University of Manchester and UMIST. One could claim as its foundation date the earliest date for either instituion (indeed the current logo cites UMIST's 1824 date), the foundation of what was historically known by that name (1851) or the merger (2004).

Queen Mary, University of London is based in four colleges, one of which can potentially trace itself back to 1123 (but didn't get formalised until 1843), another was definitely founded in 1785 and the one which historically had the name "Queen Mary" was the last to be founded. It merged with another to form the fomal title "Queen Mary & Westfield College" in 1989 but didn't take in the medical schools in 1995.

The University of Nottingham traces itself to an adult education institute founded in 1798, but didn't become a University College until 1881 or a University until 1948.

See also Third oldest university in England debate for some of these issues.

Trying to rigidly determine one date as the foundation of the current institution would be messy, especially when the name has a longer hisory that flows into the current place. Timrollpickering 12:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Type vs. governance

Pardon me if this has been discussed previously. My question relates specifically to the "Type" attribute of this infobox. It seems to be a poorly defined attribute mixing governance with other poorly defined descriptors. I recognize that this may be intentional to ensure this infobox is applicable to all institutions of higher education. I also recognize that this is greatly complicated by the lack of international classification standards.

Would it be possible or desirable to:

1. Create a separate governance attribute to help separate the poorly-defined "type" attribute from the more clearly defined governance
2. Create an attribute specifying the highest degree awarded
3. Create an optional attribute for the Basic Carnegie Classification and extended/advanced Carnegie Classifications for US institutions

--ElKevbo 04:51, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Postgraduate link

Currently "postgraduate" links to Graduate school. I think Postgraduate education would be a more appropriate link, rather than a very US specific one. Timrollpickering 16:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Changed. --Usgnus 17:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comma after state/province in location

I don't know how to do the programming for this, but there needs to be a way to put a comma after the state or province when one is listed. Something like

if {state} or {province}
{city}, {state}{province}, {country};
else
{city}, {country};

See what I'm going for? --Omaryak 20:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I think I may have just done such a thing. It runs as {city}[, {state}{province}], {country}, but the []'d portion only appears if the state or province is specified. Unless I'm missing a rather odd style convention, I think this fixes the superflous commas. You still need a city and country, no doubt about that, but the province and state are quite optional. Kevin_b_er 06:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of university residents

I really feel that the number of residents on campus should be added to the template. It is increasingly important and noteworthy how many residents live on campuses, since many college students are looking for a comprehensive experience. While most articles note residency somewhere within, it would be easy and referential to include such a statistic in the infobox. What is the consensus? --Noetic Sage 18:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about the number of students that live in housing controlled by that university? Kevin_b_er 19:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed to this addition. It's useful information and seems suitable for the infobox. VegaDark 02:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's useful but it's not always an easy number to find. We can certainly infer a range for US institutions from the Carnegie Size and Setting classification, though. --ElKevbo 02:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

As Kevin_b_er, I have no idea exactly what this is supposed to mean. People who live on land or in housing directly owned/controlled by the university? Who live in housing controlled by institutions or organisations in various ways affiliated with the university? Who live within a small university town containing an large university integrated into but still dominating its urban environment? There is no reason to use the infobox for data which needs to be qualified and is not easily applied to all or most institutions. Infoboxes are already overused. This type of information may be valuable but should go in the main text. Tupsharru 04:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, in the most basic of terms, NoeticSage may be refering to students living in dormitory. But if the information is difficult to properly describe the meaning of, esspecially given the wide variety of possibilities that Tupsharru put up, may want to just leave this out of the infobox. There's already quite a few miscellaneous tidbits in it anyways. Kevin_b_er 14:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There are some further problems because the notion of "accomodation controlled by the university" isn't clear cut either. A lot of universities within cities tend to have the accomodation in a different location from teaching facilities rather than everyone on a single campus. Throw in privatisation of halls, some complicated arrangements between universities and private landlords, plus halls of residence (or equivalent) that are occupied by students from more than one insitution and the whole things descends into statistical chaos where any rigid definition would not reflect how students on the ground feel. Timrollpickering 18:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on all points. I'm a university administrator with previous experience in housing and all of your points are valid and problematic for those of us in higher ed. Personally, this is even one area that I think NCES hasn't nailed down (not even close!) in their data and they're usually very reliable and consistent with their numbers and definitions. And of course it gets even more messy when you consider the different cultures and practices of different countries.

In the end, I am confident that we could nail down a pretty good definition for our purposes but since that definition would not be in wide use the number(s) would be unavailable most of the time. It's a good thought but from practical and professional experience I just don't think it would ever work.

Again, for US institutions the Carnegie Size & Setting classification would help meet some of the perceived need to state this figure. But that doesn't help much for non-US institutions. --ElKevbo 19:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is difficult to determine the exact number of residents and for the reasons you all pointed out, it is difficult to know what is a resident of the university, but I think including the number of people that live in campus-owned housing would be a pretty easy number to get. You call their Residence Life department and inquire, "How many students live on campus" and that's it. -- Noetic Sage 02:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that would be clear and what exactly is meant to be derived from the figure itself? The concept of the "comprehensive experience" seems odd as this isn't something that can be easily determined purely on the basis of how many students live on campus. For that matter it's equally not always clear just what "on campus" means.

To take my own current institution (Queen Mary, University of London) we have a) several sites; b) some medical students living in Mile End campus accomodation despite the School of Medicine & Dentistry being in Whitechapel and the City; c) a postgraduate hall of residence that is physically not on the Mile End campus but very close to it; d) a very high proportion (by UK standards) of local students who live with parents (arguably as much a part of this "comprehensive experience"); e) some private halls of residence in the vicinty (ditto); f) a lot of local landlords with accomodation within walking distance of the urban campus (ditto); and g) a good public transport system that allows easy access from quite a number of locations. (And until recently h) halls of residence on a site that was five tube stations, two fare zones and three London boroughs away from the Mile End campus.)

Now QMUL is admittedly an urban university with an untypically high level of local students. But to take my BA/MA institution (University of Kent) the Canterbury campus (and it's not the only site) is at the edge of the city and there is a lot of private accomodation near it - indeed quite a lot followed the establishment of the university. Whilst this isn't always enough and the university has in recent decades had to build more on campus accomodation (some of which is further from the teaching part of the campus than significant amount of private accomodation) there is still a large student contingent living around the campus in private houses who are just as much a part of university life as those in the self-catering village. And that's without even mentioning the Medway campus (which I have no experience of).

Even a raw figure like "numbers of students renting from the Accomodation Office" (if you can work out the problems of private halls and universities renting from private landlords) really reflects so many local factors (location of the university, available land, ease of obtaining private accomodation) as to render it meaningless. Anything "on campus" is even messier because of multiple sites and because some university accomodation is technically outside the nominal campus boundaries but physically very close. Keep this sort of information for the article itself, where such figures can be put in a meaningful context. Timrollpickering 03:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand your concerns with the idea. Simply put, "residents" would be considered all those students that live in university-owned housing. Not land that the university owns and leases to private landlords or students that live across the street from the university, but students who pay the university to live in the university's housing. -- Noetic Sage 18:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

And how is a simple figure such as that of any importance to the "comprehensive experience" you were talking about above? Tupsharru 18:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Students increasingly look for communities within the university environment that will provide for a more rich experience, and resident populations are the largest of these. By displaying the number of residents that live on campus one can get a feel for what kind of community the university has. Largely residential schools will have, most likely, a more tight night community where you see the same people every day. Other, more commuter-based schools won't have that as much. Sure, the numbers may not be 100% accurate just as on many university pages the number of undergrates is rounded to the nearest thousand. I think number of residents is important because at largely urban schools where community may be an issue, knowing that the school has a significant (or insignificant) number of residents will affect how the school is perceived. I don't see why adding the number of the residents to the infobox is any less useful than adding the number of staff members, which is already included. Plus, with Residence Life being a major facet of Student Affairs, administrators and staff are increasingly curious about resident counts.-- Noetic Sage 19:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

First, I'd be curious for supporting evidence for some of your assertions, particularly (a) "Students increasingly look for communities," (b) "resident populations are the largest of these [communities]", and (c) "administrators and staff are increasingly curious about resident counts." Please understand that I am not being belligerent; I am a higher ed researcher and I know of little evidence that provides good support for those assertions and I would be genuinely pleased if you could expand my selection of resources. Your third assertion is indirectly supported by the Carnegie Classification discussed below but further evidence would be welcome.

Second, I assert that you are likely approaching this from a very US-centric POV. That is not always helpful or useful in Wikipedia as we strive to write for an international audience.

Finally, I renew my call that we consider incorporating, for US institutions, the new Carnegie Classifications. In particular, the size and setting classification classifies institutions based on their size (FTE enrollment) and setting (percentage of undergraduates in "institutionally-managed housing"). --ElKevbo 19:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've missed this earlier but to respond to Noetic Sage:

"residents" would be considered all those students that live in university-owned housing... students who pay the university to live in the university's housing

Well my immediate thought is have you ever heard of the privatisation of halls of residences? (And I don't mean "land the university owns and leases to private landlords" but rather when universities sell off the halls of residences to a private company to run and manage.) Two universities of about the same age, the same sort of campus, similar student numbers etc... could easily give wildly differing results where the variable is government policy/university financial management.

I think ElKevbo has summed up the points well. Timrollpickering 01:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

To respond to everything, I think that the problems encountered when getting an accurate total of residents are no different than the problems encountered when totaling the number of students or undergraduates. Do you include international students that are studying abroad there? Do you include part-time students? What about staff members that are taking classes? What about students that are taking classes that count for their undergrad major and master's (some schools let you take master's classes as an undergrad so you can get your master's and baccalaureate in 5 years) - are they undergrads or postgrads? We could get accurate counts of residents. In fact, most university fact-books report number of on-campus residents. I understand that schools could report wildly different results, but the same is the case with number of students. What if a school has a number of campuses. Kansas State and Kansas State-Salina are different campuses yet part of the same institution. Do they report conjoined numbers or are they separate? The National Residence Hall Honorary reports # of residents as well, and this comes directly from the university's housing office.

As far as research, there are plenty articles that have done studies concluding that living on campus has a major impact on the student experience. Universities have been building new residence halls on every campus, worried about retaining students - living on campus has a huge impact on retention. I suggest looking at the research of Gary Pike, Alexander Astin, Chickering, Pascarella, Terenzini, etc. I think putting the number of residents in the infobox is just as important as putting the number of staff members or graduate students. US World & News reports the percentage of students living on campus for schools around the country. If they are doing it then I think Wikipedia should be a leader in reporting this data as well.

I think we should move forward with this. --Noetic Sage 20:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Well in terms of the student numbers there's often a clear defined source, usually based on enrollments and status. Here in the UK the Higher Education Statistics Agency has clear definitions and receives formal returns, so the numbers are clearcut, but also the data is useful.

In the case of "campus resident population" this is a lot messier and I suspect this is an issue that varies from country to country. The "stereotypical" undergraduate experience in the UK involves students on a three year course living one year in university accomodation (which is sometimes on campus and sometimes not) and the other years in private accomodation with other students - remember that in the UK almost all university students are legally adults. (See The Young Ones for probably the best known comedy about this.) Often university towns have parts that are very studentified, usually within walking/drunken crawling distance of the campus, which are to all practical purposes as much a part of the university community as the area actually owned by the university. By and large when universities here consider whether or not to build more on campus accomodation they're usually approaching this from the perspective of "is there enough affordable accomodation for all our students around the university" and not "do students want to live on campus all the time". There are also towns with multiple universities where a lot of accomodation is shared and technically run through a separate body (e.g. the [federal] University of London Inter-collegiate halls which are within spitting distance of umpteen colleges). Consequently universities of a similar age, with similar sized student bodies, attendance in campus bars/clubs and so forth etc... often have wildly differing numbers of "students living in university owned accomodation on campus" but the National Student Survey may return very similar results. Plus you haven't really addressed the issue that many universities have accomodation that isn't on the campus at all. The town/gown divide is not a solid barrier and the student community is not easily summed up by raw numbers of those just renting from the university. I really don't see including the numbers (where determinable) as offering anything more than the info in itself which is not inherently interesting in itself. Timrollpickering 21:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs a fightsong parameter

I believe this template should include a fightsong= parameter. for instance "Fightsong=Hail to Old OSU". Most if not all universities have a fight song, and most have Wikipedia pages on them. I've made the addition as I don't feel this is a controversial edit. VegaDark 01:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps most US universities - I think these are almost unknown outside North America. However, the general concensus seems to have been to allow region-specific parameters in the interests of making the template useful for comparisons between universities in one country, as well as between universities in different countries, so this is probably valid to include. Anyone disagree? TSP 17:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I had that in mind as I wasn't sure about use outside the US. I figure it's an optional parameter so universities that don't have one can simply leave it blank, no harm done. VegaDark 18:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Small Color Samples

Thoughts on adding small color boxes to actually display the school colors? An example: Pennsylvania State University Athletics. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 14:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. --Bobak 18:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Faculty" parameter

What IS this parameter for? It links to Faculty (university)... which explains that the term has two entirely different meanings in a university context, and in no way clarifies which is meant here. The singular suggests that it is meant in the sense of "academic staff"; if this is the case, can we replace it with a term (like "academic staff") which has meaning internationally? "Faculty", as far as I'm aware, is never used like this outside North America. TSP 14:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The optional "faculty" parameter is for North American universities. You are free to use staff= instead. --Usgnus 14:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

"Where varieties of English differ over a certain word or phrase, try to find an alternative that is common to both." - Manual of Style. Even our articles on North American topics should, where possible, be written in a way that makes sense outside North America. The only reason I can think of for keeping "faculty" would be if "academic staff" similarly isn't understandable in some varieties of English, but it seems like a pretty obvious term to me. TSP 14:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I changed the link to Faculty. That should be clear enough. --Usgnus 15:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

It's an improvement, and means that confused people at least have a way to find out what the unfamiliar term means; but it's better if readers don't have to click through to another page to understand terms used, and the Manual of Style seems clear that terms only understood in one variety of English should be avoided if there is an alternative that is understood in all varieties of English. Would there actually be a problem with changing the label on "Staff" to "Academic staff" and losing "Faculty"? Having different parameters with identical uses to allow for different national varieties of English seems rather contrary to the point of having templates in the first place. TSP 15:30, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

So what about non-teaching staff? In his 2004 Association for the Study Higher Education (ASHE) address, Dr. John Braxton makes a compelling argument that non-teaching staff are becoming increasingly important. Several decades of research is also clear in telling us that a substantial part of what traditional students learn in college occurs outside of the classroom and outside the tradtional purvue of faculty. --ElKevbo 16:10, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You two (TSP and ElKevbo) hint at the other problem, that Usngus's notion of using "staff" and "faculty" as synonyms, intending that only one or the other be used, is flawed because in North American usage, at least, "staff" is a much broader term than "faculty". Gene Nygaard 16:27, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, "faculty" is sometimes treated as a subset of "staff", and sometimes they are treated as mutually exclusive sets. Gene Nygaard 16:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't know if the terminology is changing but there are also some (such as Braxton) who argue that European institutions are moving closer to the American model of higher education with its large numbers of non-teaching professional staff. This is driven by standardization (i.e the Bolgna Declaration), global competition, the increasing importance of technology in educational institutions, and the (perceived) movement towards a "learner-centered" philosophy which displaces the faculty from the center of the institution and replaces them with the student. --ElKevbo 16:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

It's probably best to avoid this terminology all together, and whatever it is changed to, it is quite clear that somebody needs to go through every article using this template, and make sure that those using this parameter are using it in whatever way is decided to be the intent. See University of Kragujevac for one example using the "faculties" meaning. Gene Nygaard 16:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes - though I think that the purpose of 'Faculty' has always been for the US usage, so "Faculty" remains correct and the University of Kragujevac entry is wrong while the parameter remains. This is a perfect example of why the term should be avoided in an encyclopedia with an international audience and editorship, however.

Possibly we need another column for 'total staff' alongside the 'academic staff'; but at least it seems clear that both "Staff" and "Faculty" are ambiguous almost to the point of uselessness. TSP 16:45, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The faculty parameter should stay, if it doesn't make sense outside North America then as said above use the staff parameter. Frankly, faculty is the ONLY thing that I can see making sense for North American universities, this is what all universities here use. Saying "academic staff" vs. "non-academic staff" is still confusing. Are both janiors and researchers that don't teach included in non-academic staff? VegaDark 22:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

A researcher would be academic staff, I'd think - "In North American English, the word "faculty" has also come to be used as a collective noun for the academic staff of a university: senior teachers, lecturers, and/or researchers" - Faculty (university). They wouldn't be "teaching staff", so if "teaching staff" is what is meant by "faculty" we could use that instead.

Part of the problem is that, as a non-North American, "faculty" (in this sense, as opposed to the older sense of "a division of a university") has pretty much no meaning to me, which gives me problems in proposing alternatives.

"if it doesn't make sense outside North America then as said above use the staff parameter" - but the problem is that our readers of articles about North American universities aren't necessarily in North America; which is why Wikipedia's Manual of Style says to find an alternative that is understood internationally if at all possible, rather than using terms which are understood only in one regional variety of English, even in articles which relate to that region. TSP 14:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

In America (and I suspect Canada, too) it would completely depend on the institution, particularly its collective bargaining agreement(s), as to whether or not a researcher would be a member of the faculty. In some places researchers are contracted staff whereas at other places there are separate tenure faculty tracks for teaching and research faculty. It would also likely depend on the nature of the research and precisely who is employing the researcher.

It seems to me that "teaching staff" might be the best compromise. I would add the caveat that most (all?) American institutions will include all of their teaching staff in their "faculty" statistics except graduate students. Thus while teaching staff might be the best compromise it is indeed a compromise and will like not be 100% accurate. --ElKevbo 15:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure Graduate assistants (TA's) are included in the statistics for faculty at my college. VegaDark 19:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we just leave it? As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. --Ttownfeen 00:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It is broke. 'Faculty' has a completely different meaning outside North American English, so isn't really meaningful to many non-North American speakers of English. Wikipedia articles are meant, wherever possible, to be comprehensible to speakers of all varieties of English; which is why the Manual of Style says that, wherever possible, we should use a term which is meaningful worldwide. TSP 11:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Infobox School3

Ok aside from like 3 Highschools this template is used for colleges and universities and besides that there is already an infobox for High Schools.

Plain and simple it really seams that this screws up the uniformity of an encyclopedia and not only that it appears as though it is a waist. --MJHankel 22:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose for reasons mentioned above. If we are clumping all schools (parochial, secondary, post-secondary, elementary, etc) together then it makes articles much more generic than we at WikiProject:University would like. The structure of universities is far different from secondary schools and I strongly believe we should have a different template to reflect this. -- Noetic Sage 18:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Support – ↑what you said makes no sense. the original proposer noted that only 3 high schools Infobox School3. Therefore, those 3 high schools need to be edited to use the high school infobox instead, and then we can combine Infobox School3 and Infobox University into one. Problem solved. —lensovet–talk – 07:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non UG/PG students

Some institutions have students who aren't undergraduates or postgraduates - for instance the University of Derby has over 10,000 (c40%) further education students. See also the most recent HESA stats for UK universities (which I've been using to source stats on several pages).

Would an optional "further education" field be workable? Or is there a more generic term that covers this? At the moment some of the numbers don't add up. Timrollpickering 12:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added an "Other students" field to cover everyone who isn't an undergraduate or postgraduate. See University of Derby for a case in practice. Timrollpickering 02:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Undergraduate/Postgraduate/Other students fields

These need to all be abbreviated - look the University of Derby to see how they're displaying.

Would "undergrad", "postgrad" and "other" (it displays immediately after the other student numbers) be meaningful? Timrollpickering 00:44, 16 December 2006 (UTC)