Talk:University of London

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Contents

[edit] Alumni

The famous alumni listed are mostly UCL alumni. Add alums of other University of London colleges, or restrict these to the pages of the colleges themselves? Lukobe

Quotation: "...with between 10 and 20 percent of all UK students attending its colleges..." - could no one be more precise - surely some authority collects and maintains statistics on student numbers? Djegan 22:25, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Indeed they do, the HESA. Taking their figures the number actually works out at just over 5%, so I've edited the article accordingly. Daduzi 20:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I've added a lot more alumni, hoping to broaden the scope and deal with the criticism that the list was UCL centric. But I think now the list is getting very long - shall we create a page for alumni in their own right? Timrollpickering 11:23, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

It may be time for that especially considering the recent addition by an anonymous user. Lukobe 17:05, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps Former students of the University of London, with a brief selection here?
James F. (talk) 20:42, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Could you elaborate? Not sure quite what you mean. Lukobe 22:08, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
As in, the complete listing at the above, linked to from this page but with a small selection of the most famous ones here. Of course, the decision as to which ones are "most famous" is POV, but sometimes editorial discretion is useful. ;-)
James F. (talk) 23:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan! :) Lukobe 02:30, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Recognised or Listed bodies

Are Courtald and Cancer Research still Listed Bodies? I thought they now had college status in their own right. Both are listed as individual institutions in the HESA statistics [1] and [2] Timrollpickering 22:19, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[3] states that the ICR is a College within the UoL. Courtaulds is less forthcoming. Icairns 00:05, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Further to this, the British Institute in Paris (BIP) is now called The University of London In Paris (TULIP). I see a ghosted link to the University of London Union also appears on some pages. 00:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] External Degree program

Someone with a better awareness of where to place it among the constituent college, etc. should include the large external degree program (www.londonexternal.ac.uk), and probably link it to distance education. 64.229.40.47 06:35, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] University of London Royal Postgraduate Medical School

How does this school fit into the overall structure? Fawcett5 15:23, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

  • The British Postgraduate Medical School, based at Hammersmith Hospital, was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1931 and opened in 1935. It was the result of recommendations by the Athlone Report of 1921, and was a pioneer institution of postgraduate clinical teaching and research. The school has always been closely linked with the Hammersmith Hospital and the Medical Research Council, where its teaching research and clinical work is carried out. Senior Academic staff of the school provided consultant services and academic leadership for Hammersmith Hospital.

The school became part of the British Postgraduate Medical Foundation in 1947, and was known as the Postgraduate Medical School of London. In 1974 the school became independent, with a new charter and the title Royal Postgraduate Medical School. In 1988 the school merged with the Institute of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and became part of the Imperial College School of Medicine on its formation in 1997. --Duncan 15:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University of London Alumni?

The University of London Alumni page should be deleted. It is basically a plagerism of the LSE Alumni page with a few additions. Also it is misleading to say that people are alumni of the University of London. No one studies at University of London. People study at member colleges for University of London degrees. The University of London is only a degree awarding body. - Sarah H

A lot do study at the University of London, whether at the central institutes, on intercollegiate degrees or in research. From recollection Birkbeck's School of Continuing Education has its origins as the central University Extra-Mural programme, whilst the External degree programme is at least marketted at being the University, not colleges. The central University operates as more than just a degree awarding body, with many central facilities - e.g. Halls, Library, ULU...
I agree the list needs a rethink but to say no-one studies at the University of London is misleading and inaccurate. Timrollpickering 15:00, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It is not misleading to say that people are alumni of the University of London, for the reasons stated above. More than one fifth of the University's students are in the external programme, which is three times the size of Imperial College. One could also consider the federal LLM program. I studied at London Business School, which is formally a graduate faculty of the University of London. Its students are granted UoL degrees. Considering the possible withdrawal of LSE, IC and UCL from the University, it's important to avoid historical revisionism, where people who are graduates of the University are painted out to not be. --Duncan 15:22, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
OK lets take the example of JFK. Saying JKF is LSE alumni is the truth. But saying JFK is University of London alumni is misleading (especially as he did not take a degree, the only function of Uni of Lond).
People graduate from UCL, KCL, LSE, Imperial etc with University of London degrees. They do not graduate from the University of London.
But I can compromise on this issue. If it is made clear that the list is of those who received Uni of London degrees (those who didn't take Uni of Lond degrees should not be on the list), and if the list puts in brackets which college they graduated from, that would make the section far more accurate. I would have no problems with such a list. And I dont think anyone can object to calls for an entry or section of an entry to be made more accurate.
Anyway, the list needs to spun off into a separate entry, as has happened with other university alumni pages. I dont have the technical know-how to do this. Can someone establish a separate University of London "alumni" page with the amendments I've mentioned? - Sarah H
Why not name the section something along the lines of "Alumni of University of London colleges"? I think a precise wording would be better than having to verify who did and did not gain UL degrees (which would be a nightmare). If we can settle on a name I have a list of alumni and could get the page up and running fairly quickly. Daduzi 03:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Alumnus does not mean 'graduate', it means former student, so there is no need to be so specific about who did or did not attend a college. Luckily, this means that the bizzare notion that people graduate from college of the University but not from the University need not be resolved. Those without degrees can be on the list, including President Kennedy. I am happy to call Senate House and ask their opinion... --Duncan 17:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Imperial leaving UL

The article should mention that Imperial has left UL, also I think other colleges have award powers they do not use (eg I think LSE has this), also the article might do well to mention some of the impending controversy that might result in the disintegration of UL, info here: http://education.guardian.co.uk/administration/story/0,,1663818,00.html

  • Imperial has not left the University. It has announced that is will negotiate towards that. Of course, that meas it still many not happen. One outcome that can be ruled out is the disintegration of the University, even if the LSE and UCL follow it. --Duncan 11:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Central School of Speech and Drama joined University of London

That happened in September 2005, see here. I've added the category and the template University of London to Central School of Speech and Drama, but I can't find whether it should go under Recognised bodies or Listed bodies, so I have touched neither the text in University of London nor the template University of London… I'll leave that for UK editors to decide.  :-) --EjpH 00:00, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Provisional Alumni list up

I've set up a page for a list of notable staff and students of the University of London. The paragraph at the top would be inserted into the main article, with a link to the list. I haven't linked to it yet since I'd appreciate if others could have a look and give some comments on structure, mistakes or omissions. Thanks. Daduzi 22:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

If nobody has any objections I'll go ahead and put in the top paragraph in the page above into the article, with a link to the page. --Daduzi 13:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, done--Daduzi 13:38, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UCL/Imperial merger?

A recent revision claims UCL and Imperial are to merge. I thought this plan was abandoned back in late 2002 - or is this a new attempt?

This plan was indeed abandoned, and I can find no info about a second attempt. Lukobe

Though the London Centre of Nonotechnology is an Imperial/UCL collaboration, the two are currently concerned with attempts to leave UL, not merge bits within it. MilleauRekiir 12:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major overhaul

I've just completely re-organised the page, following the guidlines set on Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities, and added some more information while I was at it. I'm sure it's not perfect, so I'd appreciate some copyediting. There's also a few sections that could do with expanding, but I hope this sets us off to a good start. --Daduzi talk 08:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Sir Richard Sykes

Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College, said "Do we want to be badged as London University along with some less prestigious institutions?"

The quotation can be found here: Donald MacLeod, 'Getting out of London', The Guardian (Tuesday December 13, 2005)

I was wondering if there has been speculation as to which institutions he is regarding as less prestigious. Does he mean all of the other constituent parts of the federal University of London? There are surely one or two institutions in the university that are on a par with Imperial. I'm sure Imperial likes to think of itself as the next thing after Oxbridge (or, somewhat unrealistically, as on a par with Oxbridge), but I don't think it has an exclusive claim in that respect. The newspaper league tables are, of course, rather silly, but we know that people pay attention to them. LSE, SOAS, and UCL have all beaten Imperial in at least one league table, and I think on more than one occasion (the Guardian table has traditionally treated LSE, SOAS, and UCL quite favourably). In my opinion, for what it's worth, Oxford and Cambridge constitute the top stratum, and Imperial, LSE, SOAS, UCL, and a handful of non-London institutions (York and Warwick, for example) make up the second stratum. Looking at the Telegraph "table of tables" (2003), the other London colleges are ranked King's (15th), Royal Holloway (28th), Queen Mary (43rd), and Goldsmith's (56th). (Birkbeck, CSSD, Courtauld, Heythrop, ICR, IoE, LBS, LSHTM, the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Vet, School of Pharmacy, St George's, Paris, and the SAS are not listed). Has there been speculation? Has any of it been published? What do people think?--217.134.85.25 15:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's wrong with the word "College"?

Am I the only person wondering why University of London colleges are steadily dropping the word "College" from their colloquial names? We have "Royal Holloway, University of London", "Birkbeck, University of London", and "Queen Mary, University of London". "Queen Mary" is the silliest sounding because Queen Mary was so obviously somebody's name. "Thomas Holloway, University of London" or "George Birkbeck, University of London" would sound even sillier. What is wrong with the word "College"? The only sensible ones I can think of are Christ Church, Oxford and Peterhouse, Cambridge (and of course places called "Something Hall" - Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, for example). These make sense because they do include a substantive - "Church" and "-house". Is the U of L trying to sound grand by having eccentrically named colleges? Maybe SOAS will become "OAS"?

Secondly, what's wrong with Bedford and Westfield, as in Royal Holloway and Bedford New College and Queen Mary and Westfield College? I admit that "The King's Hall and College of Brasenose" has been shortened to "Brasenose College", but that evolved rather more gradually.--AlexanderLondon 00:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

On the second, and easier point, there isn't much of Bedford and Westfield that's noticable in the current institutions (and RHUL is nowhere near Bedford - geography seems to be an ever more important consideration). At QMUL there are some portraits of past principles, a clock, a road on campus named "Westfield Way" and one or two other things, but other than the name one could spend their entire time at QMUL and not encounter any overt Westfield legacy. I presume the same is true for RHUL.
Also QMUL is officially the merger of four institutions - see for instance the notes on this recent press release:
Queen Mary's roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College.
Adding in Barts and the London to the full institution title would render even the acronym unwieldy.
As for "college" there is a growing feeling that in the UK people associate the term with further education/sixth form colleges. Some institutions are so famous that they can get away with still using it (ICL, KCL, UCL) but others have opted to drop it. Also "Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London" so easily reduces to "Queen Mary & Westfield" (give or take an additional "College") whereas "Queen Mary, University of London" ensures that the UofL part is always present. I don't actually think it sounds silly (only when people shorten it further to "Queen Mary") - namewise it's not that far from "Queen's University of Belfast". Timrollpickering 08:02, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I'm interested by the idea that colleges are increasingly thought of as 6th form colleges or FE colleges. I've always found the word college useful, but maybe because I did my first degree at a collegiate university, so "college" did actually mean the college itself (as in "are you going back to college now?", enquired of a friend when leaving a lecture, which would almost never be held in a college, but in central university premises). Now that I am at SOAS I find it difficult to know what to refer to it as. The correct term is "School", I suppose. Neither "college" nor "university" sound quite right, but "school" doesn't either, so I have to call it SOAS. I do take the point that with London colleges, which are in effect universities, to say "college" (to describe King's, UCL, Goldsmith's, etc) does somewhat detract from the fact that one is actually talking about a university, and not a college in the Oxbridge/Durham sense, and yet to refer to those places as "university" doesn't quite work either, since they are also colleges, and they are quite small and contained (compared to Oxford, for example, which sprawls across the whole city).
As for the Queen's University of Belfast, it does, crucially, contain the word "University". My point is just that without the word "College", I'm left asking, "Goldsmith's? Goldsmith's what? Ah, Goldsmith's College". Of course in every day speech we might refer just to Balliol and expect somebody to know what we meant, but "Balliol, University of Oxford" would sound daft compared to "Balliol College, Oxford".--AlexanderLondon 10:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Just looking at the Goldsmiths website it seems the branding is a mess - the current masthead logo is "Goldsmiths, University of London" but the contact details are for "Goldsmiths College, University of London" and the page is copyrighted to "Goldsmiths College". And that's just the frontpage!
By and large most UofL institutions have at least one of "University", "College", "School" or "Institute" in the corporate branding. It's the contractions that get messy. Using the arconyms for "QMUL", "RHUL" and maybe "SGUL" (although medical schools can often get away with the hospital name) is workable (and, if memory serves me correct, are also used for the internet domains) but "BUL" sounds weird and I can't recall anyone ever using it (and the internet domain is BBK). Broadly it works give or take the odd anomaly or protest (anyone remember when "Imperial College" - short form "IC" - changed its branding to "Imperial College London" with intended short form "Imperial" and provoked a "keep the comma" protest from people who didn't want it called "ICL"?).
As for "college", the term was used at my BA/MA university (Kent) but by my day the concept was generally rather meaningless to students on the ground other than an irritation at times when it came to allocation of scarce facilities like accomodation (now phased out) and lockers. Most of the original plans for each college being a tight family seem to have fallen apart as number grew (they were envisaging c600 students in each of up to ten colleges, not 3000+ in four), an ever smaller proportion lived in the colleges (and non-college accomodation was built) and college based facilities became open to all students and some individual colleges lost their own (e.g. dining halls and "Junior Common Rooms"). And graduates who returned for postgraduate study were often members of different colleges from when they were undergraduates. Indeed whenever I post to the alumni mailing list I identify myself by my courses of study, not my college. Timrollpickering 10:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
There's no mystery here. The word college is unclear to a foreign applicant; taking the word university in the title increases the value, and adding London increases it further. And of course the branding will be inconsistent: universities are often weakly led, consenual organisations without the tight branding control found in corporate settings. --Duncan 12:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Third oldest university debate article

I have now created Third oldest university in England debate to try to explain all the debate about whether it's Durham, KCL, UofL or UCL. This was mainly because attempts to explain it on the individual articles were getting out of sync (e.g. both the Durham and King's articles were asserting the claim as fact in the main article, whilst a footnote on King's mentioned the point of the Charter and was added to by an anonymous user asserting that the London School of Economics proves an institution doesn't need a charter to be a good university!). I think it would work best if the detail and explanation for this is kept on one page. Please come and help enhance the article. Timrollpickering 16:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colleges no longer in existence

Could someone who is able to do it right update the line on Wye College? ("Now part of Imperial College") Much obliged, Notreallydavid 03:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LSE, King's and UCL announce plans to award their own degrees in THES

Somebody questioned the inclusion of this information as it was "rumour". The Times Higher Education Supplement seems much firmer in their assertion than this would suggest, and there was no denial in the subsequent issue from any of the colleges or from the University of London itself.

The Times Higher article directly cites the director of the LSE ("Many of our students are now surprised to find themselves given a University of London certificate on their graduation day. We have therefore decided that it would be better for the LSE to issue degrees in its own name in future. We await approval from the University of London as a whole to that proposal.") and states that King's College and UCL had "also told The Times Higher that they hoped to award their own degrees from 2007-08." Consequently this does not seem to be a rumour at all. ThomasL 15:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

It's no rumour - it's been on the cards for some time and preparations for this are underway. It won't be an instant 100% change as any student enrolled pre 2007 (2006 for Imperial) is still entitled to a UofL degree, though Imperial at least offers them the option to take a college degree instead.
My immediate reaction to the quote "Many of our students are now surprised to find themselves given a University of London certificate on their graduation day" is that if an individual college isn't going to bother to acknowledge the link and tell their students then it is solely responsible for their surprise. (Also do LSE use their own stationary for exams? QMUL uses UofL stationary.) Timrollpickering 10:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


From a email cced to the LSE Alumi Subject:"LSE Director's Letter to Alumni" 8 March 2007 21:19:

“ ... Turning to more domestic matters, there are changes afoot in relation to the School’s position within the university of London. The University of London has become a somewhat less significant feature of life here than it was in the past. In the early 1990s the government’s funding of higher education was changed, so that the grant support we receive come directly to us, rather than through the University of London. And, over the years, almost all of the joint programmes we run with other colleges in London have been dismantled. As the lawyers among you will know, the university wide LLM was dropped in favour of an LSE degree about 5 years ago. Now, the University’s central functions are small, and amount to little more than the Senate House Library, a swimming pool, and one or two ancillary functions.

In these circumstances, colleges have been considering their position within the university. Imperial has decided to leave all together. For the moment we, along with Kings and University College London, have decided to remain, but to issue degrees in our own name in future. That means that people entering the School from 2008 onwards will be given an LSE degree, rather than a University of London one. We shall also be making changes in our certificates and gowns etc. ...

 ”

--Philip Baird Shearer 10:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number of students

This will have gone down with the departure of Imperial. It needs to be updated. Lfh 12:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Most other pages are using the 2005-2006 stats as the most recent available ones - I'm not sure it's workable to arbitarily recalculate them until they catch up with departures and/or mergers. Timrollpickering 22:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
On that page I can only see the number of students in the schools of advanced study, and it would be misleading to use that only, so the options are to use the University's own figure, which seems reliable, or do our own calculation. Since all we are going here is subtracting Imperial from the previous number, it looks pretty straightforward. Which part of it would be arbitrary? --Duncan 06:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
On second thoughts, it probably would be original research to calculate our own figure. However the UoL website now gives the figure as 115,000 (+ 40,000 distance learners), which seems to roughly take into account the loss of Imperial (c. 12,000)so I am updating this. Lfh 14:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the figures are at least one year out of date (due to the way the returns are done and then released) so it would be rather confusing to give a figure that amounts to "number registered or enrolled in previous years in institutions that are currently a part of the university". It won't be a true figure for the university in the year in question and it wouldn't be the current figures either.
OR is perhaps overused - really it should be "original conclusions". There's nothing original in taking figures that are in existance in the public domain (and which have a standing for veracity) and then compounding them where appropriately. Timrollpickering 23:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps, but we don't need to do that anyway since the UoL has now updated its own site. Lfh 10:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm wary of using figures thrown about on "About the University" pages as often they're generalised numbers (does the University really have an exact 115,000?!) and there are many cases of the HESA stats being somewhat different. And 115,000 doesn't match up with the HESA stats for internal students at the colleges, which are the figures being used on the college articles. For consistency we should be using the same source (as near as possible) for both colleges and the University as a whole. FWIW here are the relevant HESA stats (complete with archaic names!) for 2005-2006:
Birkbeck College 19020
Central School of Speech and Drama 950
Courtauld Institute of Art 395
Goldsmiths College 7615
Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine 12665
Institute of Cancer Research 235
Institute of Education 7215
King's College London 21755
London Business School 1455
London School of Economics and Political Science 8810
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 975
Queen Mary and Westfield College 11625
Royal Academy of Music 730
Royal Holloway and Bedford New College 7620
Royal Veterinary College 1610
School of Oriental and African Studies 4525
School of Pharmacy 1355
St George's Hospital Medical School 3785
University College London 21620
University of London (Institutes and activities) 430
i.e. the School of Advanced Study & everything within it, the University of London Institute in Paris and the University Marine Biological Station, Millport)
(Note that Heythrop College is privately funded and doesn't appear in HESA returns. The figure used on Heythrop College is "700".)
The internal HESA total is 134,390 (add Heythrop's 700 and we get 135,090). Without Imperial it's 121,725 (122,425 with the Heythrop figure).
The other (fairly major) problem is that the university infobox template doesn't actually contain "internal" and "external" student number fields, so the individual figures weren't displaying. I've been bold and changed the "students" figure to a separated one of internal and external students, with the internal clearly designated as the figure for 2005-2006 and the footnotes containing the individual numbers.
It may be slightly OR to include a total from the Heythrop website in the calculations but this is the figure the Wikipedia article on Heythop has been using anyway (I've added a reference). Separating the internal and external students in the box is preferable because there isn't a way to display the two otherwise and they are very different types of students. Also pragatically the External number (40,000 not 41,000) comes off the External webpage. Timrollpickering 11:38, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Most famous colleges"

"The nine most famous colleges are Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, King's College London, the London Business School, the London School of Economics, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and University College London." Who gets to decide that exactly? Lfh 13:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Chancellors

This will be useful but currently the information is incomplete. According to Negley Harte's book, the following were Chancellor:

From what I can tell there hasn't been a tradition of Chancellors staying in post until they die - Rosebery's the only one on the list who did.

Anne is the only Chancellor in a contested election - she beat Jack Jones and Nelson Mandela. The election was by Convocation.

Does anyone have information about the rest of the list? I've added navboxes to the six above. Timrollpickering 16:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Found a further one - Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville. There's ambiguity because Harte's book says he held the post 1856-1891, as does his article. However the DNB says it was 15 years (1856-1871). Also the Wikipedia article claims he supported women's education whereas the DNB states He used his casting vote to block the admission of women to the matriculation examination in 1862, though he seems to have moved to a position of bored acquiescence a few years later.
For now I'm going with Harte's dates. Timrollpickering 11:42, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Further discoveries, frustratingly poorly indexed (there's no list of office holders and the Chancellorship isn't indexed fully so I've had to go through the images for the captions).
Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby 1891-1893
Farrer Herschell, 1st Baron Herschell 1893-1899
John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley 1899-1902
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery 1902-1929
I've now added a full list to the article.
I'm not sure if it's worthy of note in the text but until 1931 all the Chancellors were Liberals in politics, bar Derby, who by 1891 was a Liberal Unionist (and until that year leader in the Lords). Then royals became the flavour of the day (Athlone was the younger brother of Queen Mary), although I'm not sure how close the 1980 election went - but I can take a look in Lexis Nexis. Timrollpickering 12:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Nice initiative. Just one question, can't we add this list at the bottom of the history section? Though it is quite justified to add honorable Chancellors name at University People section, but I just felt, it would be a special honor for them to list their names as a Hall of honor at the history section. Besides, their names should be listed in the main London People article also. Niaz bd 12:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - I just bunged it in but didn't give the placing too much thought. By the way Anne was elected by a wide margin - see the new article University of London Chancellor election, 1981 - although the competition wasn't the strongest imaginable (Mandela was unable to perform the role from prison and looking at List of awards and honours bestowed on Nelson Mandela it seems that giving him various positions and honours as a statement against apartheid didn't take off in earnest until a couple of years later), not least because of the very limited time to get nominations together. Timrollpickering 14:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Handling Imperial in the people categories

Does anyone have any thoughts on how best to incorporate Imperial post departure into the various categories such as Category:People associated with the University of London, Category:Academics of the University of London and Category:Alumni of the University of London. For most of the time Imperial was in the University the federal university meant rather more than in its last few years and many of the academics and alumni in the categories have both the University and College listed in their own articles, implying something closer to the Oxbridge set-up than now. (Indeed how would categorisation handle a Cambridge college going it alone?) Currently the situation is to have some of the Imperial categories in the UofL ones but not others. The college is easily handled with a "former colleges" category, but that's not really workable for categories covering a massive time span. (And what do we do about the likes of Brian May who went away and came back?) Timrollpickering 13:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we need any change to Category:People associated with the University of London or Category:Alumni of the University of London, since those associations remain. If Category:Academics of the University of London contains only current academics, then those working only at Imperial and nowhere else in the University should be removed. --Duncan 17:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I also thought about this problem and about to start a discussion. I think Imperial people before 2007 should be listed as UoL people as they actually received UoL degree (with an exception of Imperial degree that they awarded to their students who wanted to get so). People from 2007 and onwards should be listed as Imperial people and excluded from this list (though they are not famous enough to be listed in this list right now, but for future purpose). Niaz bd 12:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe just haul Category:People associated with Imperial College London and its daughters out of Category:People associated with the University of London (and daughters). Imperial was always quasi-autonymous, and alumni of the College remain its alumni regardless of the affiliation status. For completeness, all existing alumni/academics of Imperial could be categorised directly under Alumni/Academics of the University of London in addition to their current cat. A bot could do it: currently, all members of People associated with Imperial College London are also associated with the federal University. Over time, the cats will diverge, and the pre-2007 alumni will be the intersection of Imperial People and London People.
If you wanted to keep that intersection separate, you could call it Category:People associated with Imperial College London (1907-2007) and make it a subcat of both Imperial and London. — mholland (talk) 12:20, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it would be entirely workable to just add an additional 100 alumni and academics to the top level UofL categories - not only is there the size issue but it could open up arguments for people from other colleges to be added, especially those who lived in earlier eras. A partition on the Imperial category at 2007 may be the least worst option, although I wonder if it will last or if people will want all Imperial alumni & academics together. And Category:Academics of Imperial College London whilst in the University of London is getting silly. (We also have the mess that is Wye College, although not too many people linked to it are on Wikipedia.) Timrollpickering 14:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh and the Imperial situation is far from unique. A lot of the colleges had an existance before entering the University, whilst some were partially set up to offer courses for the External Degree, but later joined up fully. For example Ramsay MacDonald attended Birkbeck, but illness prevented him from taking the exams. He most definitely was an alumnus of Birkbeck (and is one of the many famous faces cited in publicity) but equally never considered to be a university educated Prime Minister (he never appears in the list of ones who went to universities other than Oxbridge).
Currently university alumni categories either ignore mergers or have sub-categories for those who attended pre merger (but often these also include post merger students whilst the gobbled up institution retained its identity). This is not an easy area to strictly delineate but then neither are many other categories... Timrollpickering 22:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UoL asks us to not use logo

I had the email below a few moments ago. I have removed the logo, and put a note on the image to say it can be deleted. --Duncan 15:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Duncan,

It would not be appropriate to allow for the use of our logo. Its use would be seen as an endorsement of the content which may not necessarily be the case.

However, I would like to thank you for your continued interest and support for the University of London.

If there is anything else I can help with please do get in touch.

By the way are you also editing the University of London External System Pages?

Kind regards

Ms Binda Rai Head of Media and Public Relations External System University of London Stewart House 32 Russell Square London WC1B 5DN Tel: 020 7862 8545

With due respect to the University, their permission is not necessary for the image to be used on Wikipedia under our Non-free content policy, or fair use doctrine. There is near-unanimous consensus that the use of logos and arms to identify organisations does not ordinarily make it appear as though organisations endorse Wikipedia (if it did, we wouldn't use logos, full stop). Queries like this one should, in the first instance, be politely directed to the "Contact us" page, where parties can follow the links to this page and send an e-mail for the WP:OTRS volunteers to field.
I can see that the image itself is tagged unsourced, so may be rightfully deleted anyway. But I don't see any reason why I, or another user, shouldn't go to http://www.london.ac.uk/ and reupload the logo. Such use appears to me to meet WP:LOGO. — mholland (talk) 19:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The source is the website (I uploaded the image from there) but I'm not sure that will be good enough, will it? --Duncan 22:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Image:4044.jpg has a different size and is of a different file type to the logo from london.ac.uk that's on the main page. A direct URL is the best way of pointing at an image's source, but you can't upload a GIF over a JPEG on mediawiki I dont think, so it may be best to delete the old image and upload a clean one, using the source above. I've left a message on the WP:UNI talk page asking whether the logo is genuinely necessary here. And if we do restore it, I'd be keen to let the University know, just as a courtesy. — mholland (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I just don’t understand that if the constituent colleges' Wikipedia sites are using their logos, why is the central university administration giving us a hard time on this issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uofler (talk • contribs) 21:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How did it first come about?

How did it first come about, please? Can you give any background to the Times advertisement in 1831, referred to in the Edward William Wynne Pendarves article? Did Oxbridge resent the upstart at all? Vernon White . . . Talk 00:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)