Talk:Harvard University/Archive 10

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https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/7066-degrees-awarded-at-harvards-366th-commencement/

Source for updating the number of degrees conferred. Current source is 10 years old. Teamlat (talk) 23:37, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Please say exactly what you want changed e.g. "Change blah blah blah to blab blab blab. EEng 00:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 15:04, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

That's what I said. EEng 22:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Forbes now ranks Harvard #1. https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/ 75.97.137.38 (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

• God, I am so sick of all these stupid rankings. If someone would put them on a boat and sink them in the ocean, the world would be a much better place. EEng 15:52, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

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Formulairis (talk) 21:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 21:27, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

    EDIT BEGIN
    The following edit would be inserted into section Student life between subsections Student body and Athletics
    

In 2014, Harvard University had 33 reports of rape on its main campus, the fifth highest of any college in the nation, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campus safety data, and 1.1 rape reports per 1000 students.^[1]

A 2015 sexual-conduct survey of Harvard students conducted by the Harvard Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assualt found that 47% of senior women who participated in single-gender final club activities experienced "non-consensual sexual contact," compared with 31% of all senior women at the school.^[2] A March 8, 2016 report by the Task Force "blasted the single-gender final clubs, referring mainly to the all-male groups, for 'deeply misogynistic attitudes,' as well as 'a strong sense of sexual entitlement.'” College Dean Rakesh Khurana has stated the groups "undermine Harvard’s campus culture,” and are “antithetical to our institutional values.”^[2]"Though less than 10% of undergraduates are members of final clubs, by some estimates, the men’s groups in particular hold an outsize influence on campus as the gatekeepers to parties at well-appointed mansions around Cambridge, Mass."^[2]

The report found that the clubs are “imbued with a certain historical tradition that elevates members’ social status on campus,” "creating an aura of sexual entitlement". “A woman’s physical appearance is often seen as the basis for entry to these spaces, and female students described a general expectation that entering final club spaces could be read as implicit agreement to have sexual encounters with members,” it said. According to the report, non-member male students "are excluded from parties at many of the clubs," creating “a gender ratio that makes it easier for members to have a sexual encounter.” "Party themes and invitations have reflected misogynistic views and reinforced a sense of sexual entitlement, according to the report, which also pointed to 'competitive games between members where a man will ‘'win'’ a particular woman or compete for the most sexual triumphs.'”

In 1984, the male final clubs and Harvard severed official ties over admitting women as members.^[3]

Harvard does not fund or govern final clubs directly.^[2]

A new policy announced by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust and Mr. Khurana on May 6, 2016 and starting with the 2017 fall entering class, bars members in the single-gender final clubs "from receiving the official recommendations required for prestigious postgraduate fellowships and scholarships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships." Members will be barred from holding leadership positions in campus groups, including athletic team captains; "many club members have historically been captains"^{[3] [2]}

    EDIT END  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Formulairis (talk • contribs) 21:33, 16 November 2017 (UTC) 

• First of all, this is a Harvard College matter, not Harvard University. Second, it's already covered at Officially_unrecognized_Harvard_College_social_clubs. EEng 23:44, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Are there any guidelines of when someone should be added to the category Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni vs. another category? Is it any graduate in a science/math field or just those who graduated between 1847 and 1906 and since 2008, the times when it has been a separate school? Thanks! Patken4 (talk) 02:24, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

This is one of these headache-inducing academic organizational mazes that's just too complicated to explain, and when you factor in the history, just forget it. If the sources say the person has a degree from SEAS, then use that category, otherwise don't. Absolutely don't try to infer SEAS alumniship (if that's a word) from what field they were in or something; for example, Math, Stat, and Physics are not SEAS fields, but Applied Math and Applied Physics are – but don't let that fool you into thinking you can figure it out. EEng 02:39, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try to go through everyone in there looking for SEAS, Lawrence Scientific School, or some clear variation of them and keep those. Thanks! Patken4 (talk) 02:51, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

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In "Former names," add New College (1636-1639). See reference: https://www.worldbook.com/blog/This-Week-in-History-Harvard-University-was-founded-in-1636

Specify the time it was called Harvard College (1639-1780). XX243 (talk) 00:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

We've been through this over and over, and worldbook is a low-quality tertiary source. Please don't make me enumerate its nonsense. EEng 05:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: Per above. Sam Sailor 05:05, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Jytdog (talk · contribs), The extent of the boosterism on this page is extreme. I'd like to hear your opinion given your previous use of this tag on other pages.Hellishscrubber (talk) 15:17, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I just quickly reviewed this. Harvard actually is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

On the surface the article is generally free of puffery. The sourcing is pretty good - Harvard being what it is, there are lots of independent sources about it - but there is more SPS than would be good. I don't think the tag is justified here. It could use work to better source it. There are some sections that are unsourced that should be removed or sourced. But there are many much more egregious examples. Jytdog (talk) 15:32, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Jytdog (talk · contribs), that's understandable, however, I'm more concerned with the listing of academic achievements at the bottom of the introduction (Nobel Prize winners (no source), Olympic medals (no source), affliated Pulitzer Prize winners (no source)). I'm not denying that these are accurate statistics, but they are derived mostly from other pages/lists on Wikipedia. On the Columbia page, for example, you removed these exact academic achievements. Several universities such as Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, and Princeton have similarly "grand" and impressive Nobel Prize counts, etc. They should either all be allowed to parade their alumni statistics or not allowed across the board. I disagree that Harvard should be treated differently and allowed to boast subjective superlative claims just because its Harvard. Columbia, Princeton, and University of Chicago are similarly incredibly prestigious universities (though not globally transcendent brands like Harvard). Let me know what you think. Hellishscrubber (talk) 16:01, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes I struggle with these kinds of "the reference is in the bluelink" claims. Please feel free to improve this by adding citations and removing entries where it is false. btw "boosterim" most often affects lower ranked schools. Many (not all) of these top-ranked schools have been watched pretty well but there is no article in WP that cannot be improved.Jytdog (talk) 16:20, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and remove the booster tag from this page and additionally other pages which seem to be in compliance. Hellishscrubber (talk) 19:17, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Missing in the article is the original name before it became Harvard College. WikiParker (talk) 13:00, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

It didn't have a name. It was referred to as "the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg". EEng 13:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Are they necessary to appear on the rankings section? I think those overall results are well enough since almost every organization - both global and nationwide- releases a separate list for each discipline, and we certainly can't include them all here. It may look biased to just add some of them here. Biomedicinal 06:49:51 UTC Sunday, 29 July 2018

See File_talk:Harvard_University_logo.svg --RaphaelQS (talk) 18:50, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

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Under the subheading "University rankings" please add at the end of the final paragraph: "Harvard was ranked second in the 2015, 2016, and 2017 Nature Index Annual Tables, which measure the largest contributors to papers published in 82 leading journals.

Sources:

2015: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/ten-institutions-that-dominated-science-in-twentyfifteen 2016: https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2017/institution/all/all 2017: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/twenty-eighteen-annual-tables-ten-institutions-that-dominated-sciences Nature Index: https://www.natureindex.com/faq Beccc (talk) 06:46, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. – Levivich 05:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

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The sentence in the first paragraph that "The university is often cited as the world's top tertiary institution by most publishers", which then links to the sources [11][12][13][14], is not supported by all of the sources. Only sources [11] and [14] support that argument while every other source shows that a different university is the world's top institution. As such, the sentence should be removed. Runner5a76 (talk) 04:52, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF THESE STUPID RANKINGS! SINK THEM ALL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA! Ahem. My evil twin said that. EEng 05:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

 Already done Alduin2000 (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

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I suggest adding "144 Gates Cambridge Scholars" to the last paragraph (4th paragraph) of the introduction, just after the "359 Rhodes Scholars", using the following link as a citation: https://www.gatescambridge.org/our-scholars/find-scholar. I also suggest linking to the "Gates Cambridge Scholarship" wikipedia page.

Given that the scholarship is considered one of the most prestigious in the world (various sources) and that Bill Gates (who attended Harvard) founded the scholarship, it seems particularly relevant to the Harvard wikipedia page. Granticus31 (talk) 16:47, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Rhodes Scholarships have existed for more than a century, certainly notable with a world-wide reputation. Gates Scholarships are recent and not substantially known outside the USA. Specific reliable sources needed to justify the change you are requesting. --Goldsztajn (talk) 00:49, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

The intro paragraph ends with: "It has often been cited as the world's top university by most publishers," with citations of publishers who make that claim. It should be changed to "It has been cited as the world's top university by many publishers;" a more accurate and defensible statement.

Honestly I'd rather it just come out. Tacky. What does "world's top university" mean, anyway? It so pointless. EEng 22:54, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree. An "overall best" makes little sense to me. BernardoSulzbach (talk) 19:08, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

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Remove the line "It is cited as the world's top university by many publishers.[15][16][17][18]". Only 2 of the 4 listed citations rank Harvard as the top university, and the line is unnecessary anyway given the previous sentence which mentions it as "one of the most prestigious universities in the world". 130.132.173.150 (talk) 20:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Can we please get rid of the fucking rankings from all the postsecondary articles? It's ridiculous. EEng 20:41, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I support this. However, I don't expect it to ever happen. BernardoSulzbach (talk) 21:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

How about "one of the world's top universities..." as wording instead? QueerFilmNerd^talk 23:52, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

 Done using QueerFilmNerd's suggestion. Fish+Karate 14:32, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I still believe the last sentence of the first paragraph should be deleted (its citations should be merged with those of the preceding sentence). The way it is right now, the last sentence of the first paragraph is redundant and repetitive because it is too similar to the second-to-last sentence. Additionally, as EEng and BernardoSulzbach mentioned, the last sentence overemphasizes rankings. RedHotPear (talk) 06:43, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

It is cited as one of the world's top universities by many publishers sounds dopey. "By many publishers"? EEng 01:40, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this sentence is unnecessary in the lede given the sentence that immediately precedes it. The lede should be a concise summary of the article and we have to be very judicious about what we include. ElKevbo (talk) 22:11, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

In fact, I just removed the sentence. Feel free to revert and continue discussion if I've acted too quickly! ElKevbo (talk) 22:12, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

A discussion relevant to this article is currently taking place on WT:HED (section), on a wider picture of WP:BOOSTERISM across university articles. Please see the relevant section if you wish to contribute, as any consensus made there may end up impacting this article, and it would be sensible to get involved earlier rather than going through it again if it affects this page. Your views and input would be most welcome Shadowssettle_(talk) 10:27, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Last sentence of introductory paragraph: "Its history, influence, wealth, and academic reputation have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.[8][9][10][11][12][13]"

College and University Article Guide: "If you cite college and university rankings, be precise and honest... Claims that an institution "ranks highly" or is "highly exclusive" are just as vague as claims that it is "prestigious" and "excellent.[1]"

Sentence should therefore be removed or altered.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:College_and_university_article_guideline Theelettere (talk) 20:43, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• [2] EEng 20:52, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• USA-Harvard University.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi RedHotPear and EEng, I wanted to talk with you a little more about the recent changes made. Here's my reasoning:

Here's the contested wording from the lead: "Its history, influence, wealth, and academic reputation have made Harvard one of the most prestigious universities in the world." Since this is very strongly worded, it also has to be strongly supported by reliable sources, especially since its neutrality has been hotly contested in the past. I'm not contesting the specific claim "Harvard is prestigious" in this post, so let's just leave that aside here. My issue is that this wording is vague enough that it can't be verified at all. The sources extensively discuss the specific details of Harvard's long history and academic rigor as it relates to prestige. But correlating its "influence" and its "wealth", both of which are very vague to begin with, is no more supported by these sources than it would be to claim "Its beautiful campus and well-liked professors have made Harvard one of the most prestigious universities in the world".

The terms "wealthy" and "influential", by the way, runs up against some serious WP:NPOV issues. The whole point of NPOV is that you shouldn't introduce subjective assessment when it's possible to just report the facts. The university's endowment, for instance, is already mentioned in the lead, as are factual statements about its academic reputation. Is it really necessary to also include this wording in the lead when any reader would be able to surmise that the university is wealthy and influential from everything else already given in the lead.

But if we ignore the problems with the words "wealthy" and "influential", it's also a cut and dry case of WP:SYNTH to use sources to make a claim in the following way:

1: Harvard is a prestigious university.

2. Harvard is a wealthy university.

3: Very prestigious schools tend to be wealthy.

Claim: Harvard is prestigious because is wealthy.

I'm honestly surprised that this is so contentious, since it seems to follow pretty straightforwardly from Wikipedia policy. Could you please explain what it is about this that you disagree with? I'm trying to understand your perspective here better.

--Drevolt (talk) 04:46, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate this constructive post; I just made an edit toward consensus, doing away with the attempt at correlation entirely. Please comment or make improvements. RedHotPear (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi RedHotPear, I just saw your edit and I think that it resolves all of my previous concerns. It looks like we're reached consensus here, thank you for the help. --Drevolt (talk) 00:22, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi RedHotPear, Drevolt, EEng, and ElKevbo. Harvard is neither uniquely preeminent nor absolutely foremost amongst universities, and granting an exception to just Harvard is inapposite to Wikipedia guidelines. On the Talk page, I saw an analogy made to Shakespeare as being the greatest among English writers. However, the superlative is critical to this discussion. Notably, Harvard is merely “one of the” most prestigious, an appellation that many other colleges most definitely share.

That being said, there are only two possible logical recourses to this inconsistency.

The first is removing the exception for Harvard and following the policy of not referencing its prestige in the lede of any college.

The second, and more preferable, is to reverse all the edits that Drevolt made when they removed any references to prestige in a multitude of articles of prestigious universities. At the very least, mention of prestige is important to reader understanding and article comprehensiveness when discussing at least four other universities, which are Stanford, Yale, Princeton and MIT. These, along with Harvard, have been widely cited as the most prestigious colleges in the United States by many peer-reviewed academic journals regarding higher education. These schools are so well-established and confident in their prestige that they share the critical distinction of not having to rely on binding admissions processes to attract students of the highest quality, unlike nearly all other private universities, who are forced to rely on early decision policies. This is a simple line to draw, as it definitively includes only five colleges in the United States.

If there are any comments about my reasoning, I am happy to discuss them further. --Dosafrog (talk) 07:09, 20 Jun 2020 (UTC)

There is no policy that forbids any mention of prestige or similar characteristics in this or any other article. Indeed, our core policies demand that we neutrally represent the major viewpoints and facts documented in reliable sources. This general topic is indeed challenging with many low-quality sources that make these kinds of claims and many editors who are ignorant or dismissive of our policies and the low quality sources that available. In short, this is an ongoing and thankless battle of a handful of conscientious editors against many other people who have little or no regard for our policies and practices. However, there are high quality sources and we should not shy away from using them when appropriate simply because there are so many low quality sources are low quality and other editors who present challenges.

I am sympathetic to the charges that the specific statement currently in the article may not accurately represent the cited sources and the body of this article; I am definitely open to changes that address any weaknesses or shortcomings there. I agree that we need to be cautious about drawing our own conclusions (but I'm also pretty sure that good sources can be found that support the current statement).

With that said, I reject the idea that the lede of this article should not mention the prominence of this university; this is a rare example of an subject where the subject's reputation is itself so prominent that it is a central fact that readers must be informed of if they are to understand this subject. It's almost something we can take for granted but we must be wary of making assumptions in an encyclopedia intended for readers of all ages and backgrounds. Moreover, we do our readers the most service if we actually explain a little bit about why this university is so well known and held in such high regard by so many people (and matching disdain by a few who resent its influence). I think that is what the current sentence is trying to get at as it is a combination of age and wealth (which are themselves intrinsically tied - compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in our world) that makes Harvard unique in the U.S. and the world.

I encourage everyone who is interested in this topic to participate in the RfC that addresses it; it was opened on May 24 so I expect it may be closed soon. ElKevbo (talk) 19:41, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Dosafrog: I think that as you've pointed out, any line that you draw is going to be arbitrary unless you either allow boosterism in the lead of all university articles or have a blanket prohibition of it and allow it in none as a result. The main reason that Harvard has been treated as an exception is that it is, unquestionably, the university with the highest profile in the United States, and so there's considerably more pushback against removing the wording from this article than there is for most articles (note that I'm not saying anything about the quality of education at the four universities you listed, because they're all unquestionably at a comparable level academically; I'm talking exclusively about prestige here). But I agree that including it even on this page is a problem; once you allow it here, it gets hard to exclude it from other top-tier universities; and once you include it on those pages, then there are demands to include it on pages for the next tier of universities, and so on and so on. Consequently, I'm in favor of removing it from all pages, this one included. However, I realize that there's no real consensus on this topic yet, and if there are going to be any universities that are allowed to include peacock terms like "prestigious" in the lead, Harvard is definitely the least contentious, meaning that its inclusion here does not say anything about whether or not it warrants inclusion on the other four pages you mentioned. So in summary, I'm largely in agreement with you that the policy as it stands needs to be made clearer so that it can be employed fairly, and I approve of removing it from this page, but I think that it would be better to participate in the RfC that ElKevbo linked and try to work towards consensus in order to get us to that point. --Drevolt (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Any blanket policy would necessarily lead to imprecision and hence make articles less informative for readers. I do not buy the "slippery slope" argument here. As with anything else on Wikipedia, what matters is sourcing, balance, and relevance—as well as community judgment and consensus. RedHotPear (talk) 01:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi RedHotPear, Drevolt, EEng, and ElKevbo,

After carefully considering all of your concerns, I am still struck by the absurdity of this compromise supporting claims that Harvard is without a doubt the “most prominent university in the United States.” These claims, coupled with attempts to establish Harvard as uniquely exceptional among its peer institutions, rest upon the glaringly shaky ground of college rankings, a system designed not according to objective standards and peer-reviewed practices but rather in an attempt to sell magazines and generate publicity. These rankings change every year to keep subscribers coming, though colleges obviously do not change in relative quality within a period of less than 400 days. Interestingly, one can harken back to 2000, when there was a massive uproar over Caltech’s ranking by US News at the top spot (as opposed to traditional favorites HYPS), as a testament to the rabid hunger of the general public to confirm their own preconceived notions of which colleges are the best and those that rank further down in the totem pole of higher education. These recent pushback against removal of reference to Harvard’s prestige on Wikipedia is a reflection of a similar fervid confirmation bias. The corollary to that assertion is the mootness of attempts to use college rankings to justify exclusion of prestige from colleges such as Yale, which I read on a Talk page as being far worse than Harvard just because of its international rankings, which are subjective at best and entirely irrelevant and completely divorced from reality and objective facts upon further examination.

With the question of Harvard’s seeming exceptionalism eliminated, I am advocating for the more reasonable compromise between your two concerns for the line to be drawn at the five schools of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT, which is, unlike some others have hinted at, is not arbitrary but rather grounded in objective fact and the public perception that some editors on here seem to worship fawningly. Unlike previous assertions, this is not a slippery slope; as I have mentioned before, the line is clearly drawn due to differences in admissions policies, which are critical because a college’s prestige is intrinsically tied to the students that they are able to attract, and these five a distinctly above the rest in not having to force half their incoming class to sign legally binding contracts requiring them to attend if they are admitted (early decision policies.) Here are some sources that corroborate the preeminence of these five institutions above the rest regarding prestige that correct the grave error of granting merely Harvard an exception, which is antithetical to standards of consistency, with particular attention to the first one.

1. “Early programs not created equal,” Yale Daily News. 2014.01.24. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/01/24/early-programs-not-created-equal/ —> “there are only a handful of schools — MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and Yale — that do not have to worry about their yield rates. These schools know that students who apply early will likely matriculate even though they are not obligated to”

2. “Analyzing College Prestige and Virality Through Google Trends, ” Harvard Open Data Project. 2019.09.22. https://medium.com/harvard-open-data-project/analyzing-college-prestige-and-virality-through-google-trends-218b9ea767e6 —> A research group from Harvard analyzes trends among the peer institutions of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT

3. “We offered, they declined: Many admits choose other prestigious universities,” Stanford Report. 2004.10.04. https://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/october6/decline-106.html —> The Stanford Admissions Office includes a circle graph representing students who chose universities other than Stanford where the only labels included are Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and “other”

4. “Stanford in the 2010s: How do trends in majors stack up at other institutions?,” Stanford Daily. 2020.05.09. https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/05/09/stanford-in-the-2010s-how-do-trends-in-majors-stack-up-to-other-institutions/ —> The Stanford Daily examines just the five schools when researching major trends

5. “Many Ways To Define ‘The Best,’” MIT Admissions. 2005.10.05. https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/many_ways_to_define_the_best/ —> showcases the widespread use of the acronym HYPSM.

As you can see from these examples and countless more, the lines are well-defined and not merely arbitrary, both internally in perception among the students of the five schools but also externally among academics. I urge you to reconsider these edits ---Dosafrog (talk) 06:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see where anyone's advocating the text you mention i.e. most prominent university in the United States. What the lead says is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning and one of the most prestigious in the world. I can't tell what change you want to that. EEng 18:55, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
• U.S. higher education is the object of study of many scholars and we should not rely on the work of amateur authors and self-interested publications e.g., most ranking systems, student newspapers, most journalists. Moreover, I am not advocating for an exception for Harvard; I am advocating that we hold to our principles and include information published in high quality, reliable sources. If high quality sources attest to the general prominence or specific noteworthy characteristics of other institutions, that should be included in their articles, too. ElKevbo (talk) 18:56, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

  We almost need a template that can just be subst'd to paste in what you just said every time this comes up. EEng 18:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Both EEng and ElKevbo make good points here. My position is not that we ought to grant Harvard an exception but rather that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS does not justify removing content that is well-sourced, carefully phrased after numerous discussions, and important to readers' understanding. If you are concerned about other institutions, take that to those articles, not this one. RedHotPear (talk) 20:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Every time this comes up, people alway say 'x school is just as good' as a way to remove verifiable claims from this article. Instead, they should focus on adding content to the other articles. I guess it's easier to tear something down than build another thing up. Calidum 14:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The project-wide RfC for the use of prestige statements (such as found here) in the lead of articles has recently been closed, in favour of not allowing any direct prestige statements, with the following two conclusions that are relevant to this article:

• What this debate has found is that there should be no mention of the "general reputation" or "relative rankings". This means that an institute of higher education should not be described as "prestigious"...
• but it could for example be described as "Oxbridge" or "Russell Group" (or whatever the equivalents are in other countries) on the basis of a suitable reliable source

This would imply that the current wording in the first paragraph should be removed, and wording focusing on why it's prestigious without making the claim should be used instead (Ivy League, U.S. presidents, earliest college, etc.). However, I have yet to enact the change here due to previous discussions for the content of this article. I thought it best to open up a discussion here before going through with the change, however, I'd like to point out the following:

• Any difference from the project-wide consensus goes against any aim for consistency, and could lead to a slew of new RfCs for inclusion, all with article-specific editors with possible COIs eagerly involved (I'm not implying here that any editor that contributed to any RfC or any previous discussion here has POV issues, just that if you bring it to specific articles, you're likely to engage editors who do) on other university articles, reversing the project-wide consensus whenever there are enough COI editors on a different topic to do so.
• Any RfCs here might've closed differently given this consensus, so may no longer be applicable

Anyway, it's a discussion that probably needs to be had Shadowssettle_(talk) 11:58, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification! It looks like the close is being disputed ([3]) and a review is likely. We should exercise caution in overturning this article-based consensus until the project-based consensus becomes clearer. RedHotPear (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@RedHotPear: Agree—this is one of the few articles with explicit consensus for prestige comments being in it, so I don't think there's any need to rush to implement the conclusions of the S Marshall close until it settles down. I just wanted to lay out the points clearly and concisely for less-involved editors, so there wasn't an argument over what the close said, and cover some preliminary impact possibilities. Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:31, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this Shadowssettle. I agree that the conclusions from the RfC, if they hold up under scrutiny, would mean that the relevant wording would have to be removed from the lead. It looks to me like most of the admins who have participated in the review think that the close was warranted and that it drew the right conclusions from the RfC, but I also agree that we should wait for a while longer before changing the lead wording. --Drevolt (talk) 02:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

An RfC with such low participation and a contested close has little or no weight particularly for an article that has been the subject of a lot of discussion and compromise. If someone wants to reopen the discussion, they are of course welcome to do so; the RfC is largely irrelevant. ElKevbo (talk) 04:17, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the close is currently contested, and even if it holds, it is not clear what the implications are for this article. There may be another project-level RfC altogether; I would not be so hasty here. RedHotPear (talk) 18:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Just wanted to bring up the discussion so editors who might want to know about it and find out about any (or no) implications, who don't follow WT:HED, could be prepared, rather than an editor unaware of previous RfCs here starting an edit war and things getting out of hand. Not that this looks like it will matter Shadowssettle _{Need a word?} 20:50, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, the original RFC close was contested at WP:AN and overturned. The discussion was relisted and has since been closed again [4] with the opposite finding of the prior close. So basically, we're back to the status quo pre-RFC. Calidum 13:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Reposted from WikiProject Higher Education, where I was directed to post it here:

I would like to ask about a recent edit of mine at Harvard University that was reverted. I added a paragraph on Jeffrey Epstein's involvement with the university, which has been widely commented upon in the press. I believe that Epstein's involvement is of as much interest as much of the other material on the page, and will remain so in ten years' time. A similarly minded paragraph has been on the MIT page for about a year. My edit was completely removed, along with some other material, with the editor (EEng) saying "OFFS, talk about WP:RECENTISM! What about napalm and nuclear weapons and the Salem witch trials?". See edits here. I believe these removals are inappropriate, but I usually don't edit higher education pages, so I'm asking here. As pointed out at WikiProject Higher Education, the paragraph I added was long, and I agree that someone could and should edit it down to the essentials.

The same user also removed a sentence I added on grade inflation, calling it an "uncontextualized shock statistic". The removed sentence was simply stated and factual. After asking on the user's talk page about what makes it a "shock statistic," it seems like his disagreement is mostly about whether or not grade inflation actually matters, but maybe I've misunderstood. Anyway, looking for guidance on how to fix it. Gumshoe2 (talk) 19:50, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Gumshoe2; thank you for your efforts. Is the Epstein relationship of any lasting significance in the context of Harvard's history? I think not; WP:RECENTISM does apply here. For similar reasons, we do not treat the university's coronavirus response despite it having attracted comparable media attention.

I do not believe that the additional grade inflation statistic would improve the article. The existing sentence on Harvard's alleged grade inflation is balanced and a reasonable summary of the dialogue on the issue; the newly proposed statistic is sensationalized and WP:UNDUE.

RedHotPear (talk) 20:42, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I think your question about Epstein is interesting and people could reasonably disagree about it. Personally, I believe Epstein's life and philanthropy is interesting and says quite a bit about the nature of many of the US's major cultural institutions, including Harvard and MIT.

However I can't understand at all in what sense the grade inflation statistic is "sensationalized." Could you explain to me? Gumshoe2 (talk) 20:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Because the raw numbers make it look like there's some scandal latent when, in fact, there isn't. Could you explain what the reader is supposed to learn from those numbers? EEng 22:04, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Gumshoe2: in an organization as large as Harvard (10s of thousands of students, faculty, and staff), there will always be some scandals. For the main Wikipedia article, we need to focus on those which are the most serious, most systemic, and most likely to be of interest in the long run. I am not sure which ones those are, but let's look at a few:

• The Parkman-Webster murder case. Webster was a lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, and disposed of the body in a Harvard laboratory. There was no connection to his academic work or his colleagues.
• The Nadav Safran case. Safran took money from the CIA (without telling the university) for a conference about the Middle East and allowed the CIA to review his academic work. This strikes at the heart of academic inquiry, so I'd say it's pretty serious. It was also not just about Safran, but about the Middle Eastern Center. Safran had to resign.
• The Suicide of Sinedu Tadesse. Tadesse killed her roommate and herself. Though the university might have been able to prevent this through better counseling and mental health services, it seems to be primarily an individual tragedy.
• The 2012 Harvard cheating scandal involving 125 students. Was there a systemic culture of impunity? Were the rules clear? Did the College deal fairly with the students?
• Epstein. Epstein donated money to various Harvard programs before his criminal behavior became known. Among other things, he funded a research center run by Martin Nowak. So far, not a scandal unless someone shows that Nowak or Harvard knew about Epstein's illegal activities. However, after Epstein's conviction, Nowak asked the university to be allowed to accept more funding from Epstein. The University said no. But Nowak continued to give Epstein an office at the university and to interact with students. On the other hand, it doesn't seem that Epstein influenced Nowak's work. Nowak also vouched for Epstein when asked by colleagues at MIT. So clearly Nowak was in the wrong. Harvard suspended him. To what extent was the university in the wrongdoes this reflect on Harvard?

How would you rank the importance of these for the main Harvard article? Remember that there are individual articles about each of them separately. --Macrakis (talk) 22:11, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

PS It's unfortunate that we're discussing two unrelated issues in one thread.... --Macrakis (talk) 22:11, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• I won't comment at the moment on the Epstein stuff, but agree with the removal of the "grade inflation" bit. If it is something we wish to include in the article, there needs to be a better way to go about it than using the average grade from a single semester seven years ago. Calidum 22:51, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Macrakis thank you for the excellent response, it is a great way to frame the problem. Just to clarify, I'm not interested in claiming that Harvard, as a university, has done something wrong. Before I answer you, maybe you should clarify something for me, which I am genuinely unclear about, since I almost exclusively edit technical articles: how would you describe the purpose of this article? What sort of information is it meant to include? (On a tangential note- it is striking to me that with the exception of a sentence or two, the article could reasonably serve as a pamphlet distributed by Harvard itself. Of course, this isn't automatically a bad thing, but I think it clearly deserves scrutiny)

EEng I can understand the argument that grades in 2020 are irrelevant to an article on a 400 year old institution, which will presumably be sorted out in the discussion with Macrakis. Granting for the moment my position on that argument, what would be the issue with the inclusion of a simple fact like "The median grade is A-" together with a link or two to the articles which you believe provide the correct perspective?

Calidum I agree, there are other possible resources such as https://features.thecrimson.com/2017/senior-survey/academics-narrative/.

Gumshoe2 (talk) 23:11, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

None of the articles I linked (on my talk page) would be considered RSs for anything other than that certain people hold certain opinions (though they'e very well informed people, such as a former Dean of Harvard College). I'm afraid I just don't have the energy to stay with this debate to the bitter end, but grade statistics only make sense to report if there's some intelligent way to, say, compare them to grades at other schools, which there isn't. (The grades we're talking about are probably undergraduate grades, BTW. The median grade in graduate courses is probably plain A. I wonder what that means?) EEng 00:12, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The whole point would be to provide a perspective, necessarily via certain people's opinions Gumshoe2 (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

We also have the Andrei Shleifer/HIID scandal -- which led to HIID's dissolution and Harvard's paying $26.5m in restitution. Was that Harvard? Or just Shleifer and the HIDD? Marc Hauser was found to have committed scientific misconduct. Many colleges and prep schools participated in the Ivy League nude posture photos -- is that a scandal?

It's not entirely clear to me, either, what the criteria are for including something or not in this article. And we shouldn't focus on discrete "scandals" when there are systemic issues that should be mentioned, like legacy preferences, which are only briefly mentioned in the Admissions section. The historic treatment of non-WASPS, notably Jews and people of color, might be considered too brief.

Institutional failures like the lack of controls at the HIDD and the CMES seem more important to me than the individual bad behavior of a Hauser, Nowak, or Webster. --Macrakis (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be focused on the individual deeds done by Harvard. It seems to me like it is more appropriate to focus on the role and function of Harvard in the world. In this sense, the notable thing about Epstein in this article shouldn't be Nowak's deeds; for me, the key sentence is the quote I pulled from the Harvard Crimson editorial, and specifically the fact that such a statement as that quote could be coherent and sensible to make. For the sake of this article, I have virtually no interest in the "individual scandal" aspect to it. I can understand that that might be too abstract as a reason for inclusion. I also 100% agree with you about the inclusion of legacy admissions. Gumshoe2 (talk) 23:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

If we're down to quoting Crimson editorials, there's something seriously wrong. EEng 00:12, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

There are of course other sources with the same commentary Gumshoe2 (talk) 00:25, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Look, the original issue was WP:RECENTISM, and it's still recentism. Citing the Crimson is just the icing on the cake. EEng 01:53, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The problem isn't just recentism, it's also a complete lack of balance of the article in favor of the College (which has a fine article of its own where most of this material belongs). Grade inflation, yet again, is a purely undergraduate issue. --Macrakis (talk) 14:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I'd hardly call Harvard College a fine article, but I agree that much of the College material here belongs there. EEng 14:29, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

"Fine" as in RTFM. --Macrakis (talk) 14:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

@RedHotPear: the article read:

The Massachusetts Great and General Court authorized Harvard's founding.

I changed this to

Harvard was chartered by the colonial legislature, the General Court.

This was reverted, with the edit comment "that it was MA is an important detail. the current MA legislature is still referred to as the General Court; in colonial times, it was called the Great and General Court".

For the typical reader, it is not at all clear what the "Massachusetts Great and General Court" was (in modern language, a court is a judicial body), which is why I described it as the "colonial legislature". On the other hand, it should be pretty clear that a colonial legislature is the legislature of that particular colony (what else would it be?). As for using the full title rather than the abbreviated one, I find that pedantic, though arguably cute "color". BTW, my use of the word "chartered" may be incorrect.... --Macrakis (talk) 14:32, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm sure you two can hash out the General Court issue, but yes, charter is quite wrong for this point in Harvard's history; founded, created, or first funded are among appropriate alternatives. The (ahem) Great and General Court did indeed eventually give Harvard a charter, but that was in 1650. EEng 14:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

You make a good point that it is helpful context to specify that it is a colonial legislature. I am looking to source 3 for guidance on wording here. And sure, I suppose I do not insist on sticking with "Great and" either. To move toward consensus, what about:

The Massachusetts colonial legislature, the General Court, authorized Harvard's founding.

RedHotPear (talk) 15:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That sounds like an improvement to me, though I still think that "Massachusetts" is unnecessary. --Macrakis (talk) 15:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay. I will implement it. RedHotPear (talk) 15:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Inspired by the discussion above about how much space should be given over to Epstein and other scandals, I read over the whole article with an eye to balance. The thing that struck me the most was the overemphasis on the College compared to other parts of the University. Of course, before 1800, that's pretty much all there was. But since then, the other schools have become increasingly important and today, only about 1/3 of the students are at the College. The current version of the article has a few words about Business and Engineering because they are (or will be) in Allston, and a full paragraph on the Medical School (which somehow manages to mention research opportunities for undergraduates!), but nothing at all about Law, Design, Education, Government, and Divinity. The only things it says about Dentistry and Public Health is where they're located. On the other hand, it has multiple paragraphs about undergraduate admissions, the undergraduate curriculum, and a section on undergraduate Athletics which is twice as long as the section on Teaching and Learning!

The article should be written in summary style, with brief mentions of all those topics and links to the main articles. It should also have at least a paragraph on each of the schools, not just a box listing them. --Macrakis (talk) 14:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I have always despaired of doing much about the wretched state of the whole family of Harvard articles until some halcyon day when I've got a huge amount of time on my hands; perhaps I should kill someone and get myself imprisoned. Right now I believe User:RedHotPear is our best hope for salvation. EEng 14:36, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you EEng!

I completely agree that the section on Athletics should be mostly moved to the Harvard College article. Makes no sense that Harvard College's athletics section is the summary for article's section, rather than the other way around.

There do remain large disparities in the notability of and due weight for the different schools. The College remains the most notable school and it would not make sense to give similar weight to, say, the School of Dental Medicine. But I agree that there are productive changes that could be made to improve balance, and we can discuss what is appropriate.

RedHotPear (talk) 15:36, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure how exactly we can measure notability, but internationally, I get the impression that the Business School is at least as well known as the College. Law School alumni dominate the Supreme Court. The Design school has multiple Pritzker Prize alumni. Government has many notable alumni. I know less about Dentistry and Education. Surely each school deserves at least a paragraph. To make room for that, we can remove the Athletics section and abridge the undergraduate admissions and curriculum sections. They certainly deserve to be covered on WP (and are!), but not in the overview article on the University. --Macrakis (talk) 15:57, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Certainly agree that Law and Business, and to a lesser extent Government, can be covered more. But in the context of the Harvard's history, organization, and public image, I do not think it is disputable that the College merits the most in terms of WP:DUE weight. Happy to work with you to balance the article. RedHotPear (talk) 16:07, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I was going to say the same, especially when you fold in the inextricable link between the college and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. But in the final analysis, this article should be mostly history and Harvard-wide stuff that transcends particular faculties, then a modest section on each faculty (with pointerS to the main articles on them, of course). EEng 16:16, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Why do we have a full paragraph on Agassiz? If it's worth that much space, it's surely also worth mentioning his resistance to Darwinism and his adherence to scientific racism. But actually, it's probably best to leave all that to the article about him. And why do we talk so much about Agassiz in particular and not other notable 19th century professors like William James (!)? I'm not sure we should be mentioning any individual professors in that section. --Macrakis (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the second paragraph in the 19th century section is excessive. The first and third paragraphs are concise and informative; I cannot say the same about the second paragraph. RedHotPear (talk) 16:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Why do we mention the three hotels that Harvard owns? It's enough to know (in this overview article) that they have commercial real estate holdings. --Macrakis (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Agree. Will trim it down; let me know what you think of my edit. RedHotPear (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I would personally prefer retaining a short "Student life" section; the "Student government" subsection applies to not just the College! The demographics box would also be a good fit for the section; it is very awkward to have demographics under "Organization and administration." RedHotPear (talk) 20:50, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention when I moved the student government. Any time something can be said about all the schools at once, without reciting too many exceptions or variations for individual schools, then probably that should be covered here in "HU". Having said all that, I wonder how much common overview can be given for student life, beyond a general statement that all the schools are highly residential. And I'm even more skeptical re student government, because all schools have such organizations and I don't know of anything about Harvard's that's worth mentioning in the HU article; I suspect better to have each school's article should say something about that school's government. But what do I know? And we're all friends here, so BE BOLD! EEng 22:36, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

I put in a greatly shortened "Student life" section. Harvard Graduate Council is a cross-school entity and could definitely belong here. My take is that briefly covering this basic information is reasonable even if there is not necessarily anything special about the Harvard versions in particular. With regard to athletics, I do agree that it should be massively pared down and mostly moved to the College article. But while it is true that the vast majority of players are College students, IMO there is something to be said for the Crimson's role in student life for the university more broadly. RedHotPear (talk) 00:37, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Also a natural place to put the demographics box, which serves as a great high-level overview of the student mix for the university! :) RedHotPear (talk) 00:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Your athletics material seems right, but I think the student government point is worth pursuing. If there was just one big article on Harvard then yes, we'd have to stuff in links somewhere to the student government organs, as a matter of record if nothing else. But we have separate articles on the different schools. Someone reading about the college will expect to read something about the college's student government; someone reading about the med school will expect to read something about their student government (even if it's just the umbrella grad student organization), and so on. But really, someone reading about HU as a whole almost certainly doesn't care, and will be disappointed to follow these links to find (let us face it) nothing special. The fact that there's just that one blah sentence confirms this. But it's not a big deal; as so often happens, this kind of issue will become clearer as the Student Life sections grows. EEng 01:20, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I do not particularly insist on the student government portion either. You clearly have thought a lot about the UX aspect ;) RedHotPear (talk) 02:39, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

UX? EEng 03:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

User experience! RedHotPear (talk) 03:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

(Oops, I was kind of basing this off of your CS background.) RedHotPear (talk) 03:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I figured that, but then I though maybe it was Undergraduate Xomething. (Someday ask me to tell you the toilet paper story.) But yes, shedding your skin and taking on the reader's is essential for writing effective articles. EEng 03:56, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

So for many years there was the Undergraduate Assembly, an absolutely impotent body that accomplished absolutely nothing – nothing – ever. And I mean ever. They couldn't even organize a dance. So somehow some radical reform was enacted by which the Undergraduate Assembly would be supplanted by a new body, the Undergraduate Council, I guess with a budget and some limited authority (over something, but it's hard to imagine what – maybe which cookies would be offered in the dining halls on which days of the week). Hopes ran high. But in its death throes, in the last semester of its existence, the lame duck UA gathered its inner strength and finally manage to achieve something. What did it achieve, I hear you ask? Thereby hangs a tale.

As everyone knows, the houses at the Radcliffe Quadrangle were formerly occupied exclusively by the fair students of Radcliffe College, while the boys all lived at the River. Coed housing began in 1969 and within a few years all the houses were coed. But entrenched habits die hard, and certain oddities persisted at the Quad e.g. after-hours visitors had to sign in and out at the "bell desk", placing their names in a kind of hotel register colloquially known as the "charred body book" because (it was popularly said) it would be used to identify corpses in case of conflagration. (Probably the real origin was some ancient parietal rule meant to promote chastity.)

A lesser-known holdover from the old days was a discrepancy in the provision of necessaries. At the River houses toilet paper had always been free for the taking at the superintendent's office. But Radcliffe girls had enjoyed no such largesse, and had to purchase their own toilet paper. And this remained the case several decades after all housing had gone coed – and here's where the old UA comes in. It took up the cause of rectifying the hygienic injustice, and passed an appropriate resolution. And it worked! Harvard authorities agreed that henceforth all undergraduates would receive free toilet paper, regardless of where they lived. And that was, at long last, the UA's one and only achievement before passing into history. EEng 04:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, for its only achievement, that is not too bad! Thank you for sharing :) RedHotPear (talk) 06:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

You might say they wiped the slate clean. EEng 12:22, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

The Harvard endowment and the derived income is mostly (80%) restricted to specific schools, departments, and programs. This is not a function of class enrollment or other usage metrics. Some departments are richer than others simply because they've been around longer, and were more popular in the past than today. I don't have the figures, but I would guess that Classics has considerably more named chairs (i.e., endowed professorships) per concentrator (major) than Visual and Environmental Studies or African and African American Studies does.

In addition, operating budgets are at the school level, and money is not reallocated from one School to another, even though (for example) the Business School does very well financially and the Divinity School does not. [5]

On the other hand, I don't know how tuition income is allocated within the Schools and in particular how Departments are funded within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. I'm pretty sure that tenured faculty (except perhaps in the sciences where outside research money is important?) are mostly paid out of endowment income -- after all, hiring a tenured professor is a long-term commitment -- you don't fire them because their field has become less popular. --Macrakis (talk) 15:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for all the great work that focuses this article on the University as a whole, and removes its previous over-emphasis of the College. A few more points:

• The lead says:

"While the nominal cost of attendance is high, the university's endowment allows it to offer generous, no-loan financial aid packages and use need-blind admission."

This applies to the College. It does not apply to most graduate study, except perhaps GSAS, where most students are funded through Teaching Fellowships, and those in the sciences are also funded through Research Assistantships. As far as I can tell, it does not apply to most Business, Law, Medical, Education, and Design students, though some of them have partial funding sources for special cases. I don't know about the other schools.

At the very least, this should be qualified, and become something like:

"While College tuition is expensive, the College's endowment allows it to offer generous, no-loan financial aid packages and use need-blind admission."

I'll edit that, but the statement should probably be moved elsewhere in the article.

• The History sections seem to focus on the College. What was going on at Law, Business, Medicine with non-WASPs? Were they equally discriminatory? More so? Less so?
• A university-wide principle which should be mentioned somewhere in the Endowment section is "Every Tub on its own Bottom". The President of Harvard University article mentions that in connection to governance, which is not quite right. What it really means is that most subparts of the University (Schools, Departments within Schools, Programs) have their own endowments, and just because (say) the Classics department has a large endowment does not mean that the Celtic Languages and Literatures Department does. As the financial report cited in the article says, only 30% of the endowment is "flexible" and not committed to particular activities.
• The statement that "endowment income is critical, as only 22% of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board" is incomplete and thus misleading. It makes it sound (by omission) as though 78% of Harvard's educational costs are covered by the endowment. But in fact 17% of revenues are research revenues, which only partially and indirectly support education (mostly through grants to grad students). And the proportions vary widely by School. In particular, FAS gets 50% (not 78%!) of its operating revenues from the endowment and Public Health only 18% (as shown in the report in the footnote).

On the other hand, it is worth noting that 96% of undergraduate student aid comes from College resources (endowment and annual giving).

I look forward to working with all of you on improving this article! --Macrakis (talk) 21:17, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Two quick points. First, the financial model that you are referring to ("every tub on its own bottom") is formally referred to as "responsibility-centered management" (or, less commonly, "responsibility-based budgeting"). Harvard is one of the most well-known practitioners of this model and I agree that it should be briefly mentioned. I am not familiar with exactly how the model works at Harvard but it usually goes well beyond just endowments by allowing academic units to keep much of the tuition and fees for their classes after paying a "tax" to the institution's central administration(s). There are definitely good references in the academic budgeting literature you can read and cite on this model and Harvard's role in popularizing it.

Second, please remember that "university," "college," and "school" are common nouns that should not be capitalized. ElKevbo (talk) 21:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

The history section appears okay to me. It does not seem unbalanced, and when it comes to the discriminatory aspect, there is just much more coverage and scholarship about this at the College than at the other schools you mention. Again, especially in the historical context, the College is simply a degree more notable than the others. I will look at the funding and endowment material when I have more time! RedHotPear (talk) 22:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

(The Business School, for example, was established in 1908.) RedHotPear (talk) 22:12, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

And oops, sorry Kevbo. I think the use of caps (such as in College) is meant to be a shorthand for the proper noun (such as in Harvard College). I wonder if you think this is incorrect? RedHotPear (talk) 22:20, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that would be incorrect. It doesn't matter for discussion between editors here in Talk; no worries there. We just shouldn't capitalize common nouns in articles. ElKevbo (talk) 22:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I just saw that you addressed this issue about capitalization here.

I find it silly that we use the qualifier "Harvard" in front of every unit of the University. In an article about X, calling X's medical school "X Medical School" is pedantic and redundant. We should either call it "the Medical School" or "its medical school". "The" is more convenient, since we don't necessarily have Harvard conveniently available as an antecedent in all cases.

Another reason using the capitalized names is better is that Design, Divinity, Government, etc., aren't standard names, and it would be incorrect to call them the architecture school (because design also covers urban planning, etc.) and the theology school (because Divinity isn't a seminary). --Macrakis (talk) 23:02, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, I do agree that lowercase would work most of the time. In select instances, though, lowercase seems to lead to ambiguity. Are you certain that the proper noun exception would not apply for these? RedHotPear (talk) 00:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I am sure although I reserve the right to change my mind if presented with a specific example. There is a specific example at MOS:INSTITUTIONS that seems to be directly on point with this discussion. But feel free to ask other editors here or drop a line in the Talk page of that part of the MOS to get some outside opinions! ElKevbo (talk) 00:33, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. A test case for you: what about "School of Engineering and Applied Sciences"? Going with a strict interpretation might preclude that in favor of "school of engineering and applied sciences," but to me, something like "School of Engineering and Applied Sciences" seems okay, even without "Harvard" appended. RedHotPear (talk) 00:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

(I am sure that we can substitute "engineering school" and avoid the issue altogether, but the test stands; it is theoretical, not practical. Let me know what you think!) RedHotPear (talk) 00:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

When you say it is theoretical, not practical, you're referring to Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences? EEng 01:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

LOL that truly made me laugh out loud. They might as well rename themselves and become the world's first School of Theoretical Engineering ;) RedHotPear (talk) 03:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm not going to lose any sleep if we drop the leading "Harvard" from the names of the these organizations and retain the capitalization for the unique names especially if that occurs after we have initially introduced the full name. I think it only gets weird when we have sentences or lists where we have several of these units, some with titles that are (literally) common nouns (e.g., medical school) and some with unique titles (e.g., School of Engineering and Applied Sciences). I don't know what the strictest pedants would say but in those instances I think I favor keeping them all capitalized in that specific instance. I know that would introduce an inconsistency in other places where we'd not capitalize the common nouns but this seems like a more friendly compromise for readers who might find it jarring and confusing to see some capitalized and some not in the same sentence.

As you have already alluded to, however, the better solution in most cases is to rewrite the sentence to avoid this issue altogether if that's possible. ElKevbo (talk) 00:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to spill too much "ink" on this... but it seems to me that Design is the name of a school, more fully, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and not a generic name, which is what MOS:INSTITUTIONS addresses. In particular, note how the MOS article specifies that City (with a capital) is the name of the City of London, and should thus be capitalized. I would argue that the College is a similar case, in the context of the Harvard article. I agree that for medical school, lowercase is fine.

We also have the issue of how much of the full name of each unit to use. General Wikipedia policy is to use the common name, not the formal name. Thus, there is no reason here to talk of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences or the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It's less clear what the common name of the John F. Kennedy School of Government is -- it is in fact often called the Kennedy School or KSG and not often called the School of Government. But for an outsider, Government is certainly clearer. Design and Education have the word graduate in their names; I see no reason that we should call them that in this article (the detail article of course mentions their full formal names). --Macrakis (talk) 14:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Quick note: I think the "City of London" exception in MOS:INSTITUTIONS is a singular, unique exception. I don't know why that one exception exists and why it's the only one. ElKevbo (talk) 15:14, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

The Institutions policy has three parts: Full names, Generic names, and Political or geographical units. It doesn't say anything about non-full proper names, like Kennedy School or Design -- note that lowercase design does not usually mean "a university faculty dedicated to design" and so is not "generic". I suppose we could use initials like HBS, KSG, and GSD, but that is not very friendly to the non-Harvard reader. --Macrakis (talk) 15:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Another example, by the way, of capitalized short names is in the article Harvard Square, where the name "the Square" (its common nickname) is used to avoid repeating "Harvard Square" inordinately often. I don't think lowercase "square" would work here -- for one thing, it isn't a (town) square in the usual sense of being a public open space (usually rectangular) bounded by buildings. --Macrakis (talk) 21:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what point the bolded text is trying to make: "All faculties conduct research, and many host departments that are central to their fields." Isn't it understood the Divinity will have a New Testament department, that Business will have a Finance department, and that Medicine will have an Anatomy department? More subtly, FAS, HMS, HSDM, and HSPH all have biology departments, but the lead isn't the place to discuss how they are related. Also, "host" is a funny word for a department within a faculty. --Macrakis (talk) 21:45, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

The intention is to expand on the extent and influence of Harvard's research efforts, not the types of departments or how they are related. E.g., the Department of Economics within FAS is central to economics as a field. RedHotPear (talk) 21:58, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I didn't get that at all from the wording. It is also too broad and vague ("many") to be meaningful. Yes, there are many departments in many faculties that are considered among the best in their fields (though "central" is not the word I would use), but that sort of evaluation cries out for RS, and probably doesn't belong in this section, which is about the organization of the university to the level of schools, not about individual departments and their reputations. Heck, we don't even mention what the professional schools are until later in the article. --Macrakis (talk) 22:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

My primary concerns were the overemphasis on degree programs for students and the corresponding treatment of research and scholarship as secondary. That section is not really working as coverage of "the organization of the university to the level of schools" IMO, unless it is equating such coverage with the schools' associated degree programs. This version ([6]) is probably preferable and avoids these issues. It does not at all imply that most non-FAS students are in research-oriented programs; it is merely presenting research in its proper context as a core function of the faculties. Again, a university is more than the sum of its students; in faculties where most students are not conducting research, it would be referring more to the faculty, the labs, the postdocs. RedHotPear (talk) 23:30, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I certainly agree that research and scholarship are important functions of the university as a whole and of the individual faculties. However, I don't find the current wording, or the previous wording, to be ideal. I think it's clearer to address the teaching and the research functions separately. And I see no reason to address the reputation of either the teaching or the research functions in this section. --Macrakis (talk) 00:08, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I obviously will not insist on the reputation bit, as it was just a compensatory band-aid to the overemphasis on the degree programs. What is your objection to something more similar to the version that I linked? For me, it would resolve the due weight disparity between the teaching and research functions. Otherwise, I would also be content with a different expansion of the research sentence than what I proposed, so that the sentence is not literally just "All faculties conduct research." RedHotPear (talk) 01:42, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

OK, I've deleted the band-aid since we agree on that. Let's figure out how to expand the research part in a better way. --Macrakis (talk) 02:36, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Certainly an important topic that needs to be covered on WP. I'm surprised that we didn't have anything on it before now. However, such an extensive discussion doesn't belong in this article. The bulk of the content belongs in University Hall (Harvard University), with a summary here and in History of Harvard University. --Macrakis (talk) 16:20, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I'll move the content over to University Hall (Harvard University) and add summaries. I've got quite a bit of material left, do you reckon the topic is important enough to warrant a full article on its own? Caius G. (talk) 17:02, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Possibly. I don't know what else we have on the "events of 1969" (as they say in French) in Cambridge: the trashing of Harvard Square (1970), Old Mole, ... All that together surely deserves an article, but if you want to start with University Hall (Harvard University), we can refactor later. --Macrakis (talk) 18:54, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

This is way too much for the University Hall article as well -- too much background and too much detail on the even the event itself. I've moved the material to Harvard_University_and_the_Vietnam_War. EEng 06:14, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Good solution, thanks! --Macrakis (talk) 20:55, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

We don't seem to be converging on a statement about where Harvard's campuses are located. One version stated that they were in Greater Boston, which is misleading, since Greater Boston is a rather large area (something like 80 miles in diameter), and yet all three of Harvard's main campuses are within 3.5 miles of each other. My edit replaced that with an explicit statement about how far apart they are, but my edit was reverted with the comment that "many readers do not recognize that Allston is also in Boston". Frankly, I don't see why anyone would care that Allston is in Boston; what's more important is that the Allston and Cambridge campuses are adjacent. On the other hand, I do think that the uninformed reader should be told that the Medical Area is in Boston and separated from Cambridge/Allston by a few miles. --Macrakis (talk) 20:55, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• Little-known fact: Allston-Brighton was part of Cambridge until 1807, when the town's failure to maintain the bridge connecting A-B to Cambridge proper (i.e. at the site of the Anderson bridge) prompted A-B to separate from Cambridge; it was absorbed into Boston in the 1870s. Anyway, I do think it helps orient the reader to know that Allston is part of Boston. EEng 22:33, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me much more relevant to the non-local reader that the Allston campus is adjacent to the Cambridge campus and that the Medical Area is 3 miles away than to worry about the fact that Allston is part of Boston. --Macrakis (talk) 23:00, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

They're both relevant and both easily included. (I assure you there're plenty of local readers who don't realize that Allston is part of Boston.) EEng 01:02, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but why does anyone care? This is just the lead of the article; it's not as though we're going to discuss the planning negotiations with the City of Boston here. --Macrakis (talk) 16:59, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

I didn't know we were talking about the lead. Carry on. Meanwhile I'll flit off to make uninformed, half-baked comments on other articles. EEng 17:17, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Not notable on its own merits - every university has a health service. Rogermx (talk) 17:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

• Don't merge The current HUHS article is a stub, saying little of interest. I suppose that the history of the Harvard infirmary and health services could be valuable if there's something distinctive or significant about it (the earliest? run in some novel way? located in a significant building?), but I'm not aware of any such claims to notability.

But merging it into the Harvard University article is probably the wrong way to go. The HU article is already pretty long, and adding information about HUHS won't improve it, precisely because, as you say, every modern university has a health service.

So I would prefer leaving it as it is in the hope that it is improved over time. --Macrakis (talk) 19:37, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

• Don't merge What M said. UHS is almost certainly notable, being pioneering and [insert the usual Harvard superlatives] and so on and so forth, and everything Harvard-related gets lots of coverage. Once you get past that comes the question of whether information on UHS is best presented on its own page, as usual, or on the main Harvard University page (i.e. the WP:NOPAGE question); the answer to that is that the HU article would be bursting at the seams if it tried for more than a sentence (or even clause) on most H-related topics. It's just not possible. By leaving the stub some enthusiastic editor is helped to expand it. EEng 20:32, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
• Don't merge Generally agree with above comments. The main article cannot plausibly give attention to every aspect of Harvard, and leaving HUHS as a stub is not particularly problematic. RedHotPear (talk) 23:49, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
• Merge It's reasonable to have one sentence about this service in this article. It's implausible that the topic is itself independently notable and merits a separate, standalone article so if it's not merged it will likely be deleted (if someone nominates or proposes it for deletion). ElKevbo (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

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