Category talk:Academic institutions/Archive 1

Archive 1

Reorganization

I propose unification of "Colleges" and "Universities" categories into "Universities and Colleges" categories because:

• Almost all existing articles and lists and subcategories combine colleges and universities.
• Some institutions (like say, MIT, a "degree-granting institution of higher learning) are difficult to classify.
• Almost all readers are looking for a unified list, anyway.

This entails doing the following (shown in existing tree):

Category:Colleges -> Redirect to Category:Universities and colleges
 Category:Military colleges -> delete
  Category:Military colleges and universities
         -> Universities and colleges; Military
 Category:Colleges by country -> delete
  Category:Universities and colleges of COUNTRY X
         -> Move to Category:Universities and colleges by nationality
  Category:Universities and colleges by nationality 
         -> Should be in Category:Universities and colleges only
Category:Universities -> Redirect to Category:Universities and colleges
 Category:Military universities -> delete
  Category:Military colleges and universities (shown above)
 Category:Universities and colleges by nationality (shown above)
 Category:Lists of colleges and universities 
        -> Move to Category:Universities and colleges
 Category:Grandes écoles
        -> Move to Category:Universities and colleges?
 Academia operosorum Labacensis
        -> Assign to the appropriate country?

I'm not sure if Category:Grandes écoles should be translated into English, and whether or not it should be "Universities and colleges in France"? -- Beland 04:27, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would like them separated. If an article doesn't fit into cat:colleges nor cat:universities then create a category for itself or add it to cat:higher education institutions or something like that. The problem with cat:univ & colleges is that we have many contributors that use cat:univ instead of cat:univ & colleges because the first makes more sense. The problem is that there are so many using cat:univ & colleges that doing it by hand sucks, ask andre engels or angela to do that with bots or somthing. —John | Talk 04:41, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

I want them merged, with two exceptions. Grandes Écoles are a particular kind of French university, so Category:Grandes écoles should first of all be capitalized properly, and then should be made a subcategory of Category:Universities and colleges in France. Category:Lists of colleges and universities should also be kept as a subcategory of Category:Universities and colleges. Not my thing, but based on the proliferation of these kinds of categories in many other areas, a lot of people seem to like grouping list articles all together. I agree that all of the remaining should be merged into Category:Universities and colleges and then deleted. There is no use to having separate categories for universities and colleges. Postdlf 04:54, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As Postdlf says, grandes écoles are a particular kind of French colleges. Administratively speaking, they are distinct from normal public universities: they recruit their students differently, and are organized very differently in general. I removed the capitalization, since it should be lowercase.

I don't think you can do a translation of the concept into English. A direct translation is "great school", which does not mean anything. "Elite school" sounds pretentious, and anyway not all grandes écoles are elitist.

I note that many articles in English on this topic on other sites and newsmagazines leave the original French word. I think this is appropriate for foreign concepts for which there's no clear unambiguous translation. David.Monniaux 07:37, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There are grandes écoles in Italy too - they are called scuole superiori and, from what I know of them, they work just like grandes écoles. This leads me to suppose they exist in other countries too: wouldn't it be better to regroup all of these institutes under something like 'College-like institutions' (surely someone can provide a better name)? 62.98.115.74

There is no use to having separate categories for universities and colleges.

Check out Category:Universities by nationality and compare it to Category:Universities and colleges by nationality. Category:Universities by nationality had 17 entries before I started to include univ&colleges under it, while Category:Universities and colleges by nationality had only 2 (US and India, all the others were added by me). It looks to me that the majority of contributors use [[Category:Universities in Country X]] rather than [[Category:Universities and colleges in Country X]] —John | Talk 05:12, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

My statement was more that it doesn't make sense as a classification to divide colleges and universities, not whether people are inclined to do it or not, because practice can be changed. Logically, there is nothing gained. I also think if we kept them separate, we'd have a lot of arbitrary inclusions in both, and it hamper navigation because it would be difficult to know which one to look in. Postdlf 05:24, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at the discussion of the use of the terms "college" and "university" in college, and the comparison between the U.S. and U.K. usage. It looks like the distinction means more in the U.K., and it's a different kind of distinction from that in the U.S. which is more of an imprecise separation between the kinds of degrees offered. Postdlf 08:22, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Damn, what a freaking mess! I never saw it that way cuz for Puerto Ricans a college is either an institution that offers associate degrees but no bachellor degrees or a private K-12 school. Over here a university is any higher education system that offers bachellors (even if it doesn't offer masters or doctoral degrees). By the way, in many Latin American countries a "college" is a K-12 school while a higher education system is a "school". Spaghuetti-O! —John | Talk 17:53, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

It seems that what is the most consistant is that colleges and universities are designations given to instititutions of higher education, period, with a difference in usage between the two words varying wildly. I still think the best option is to keep a unified Category:Universities and colleges, merge everything under that, delete Category:Universities and Category:Colleges, and simply police every now and then to move articles if those categories are recreated. Postdlf 19:16, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, yes, send the bots to do the dirty work. The college article convinced me. —John | Talk 19:51, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm starting to implement the change. I'll document what's left over, if anything... --Beland 02:05, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Before you get too far, I had a thought—because "university" and "college" seems to be an important distinction in the UK, I think there may be reason to have a separate category for each in this instance, with the only parent being "Universities and colleges in the United Kingdom". I think if we do it that way, without having separate root categories for colleges and universities, we can respect differences where they exist (as the differences will, er, differ, country by country), but we won't be stuck with the split all the way down where it may not mean anything. Postdlf 02:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I added a note to Category:Universities and colleges that "universities and colleges" means "institutions of higher education", etc. Between Postdlf and myself, I think everything has been implemented now. -- Beland 03:09, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Individual country categories

Before you get too far, I had a thought—because "university" and "college" seems to be an important distinction in the UK, I think there may be reason to have a separate category for each in this instance, with the only parent being "Universities and colleges in the United Kingdom". I think if we do it that way, without having separate root categories for colleges and universities, we can respect differences where they exist (as the differences will, er, differ, country by country), but we won't be stuck with the split all the way down where it may not mean anything. Postdlf 02:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I didn't touch the contents of the individual-country articles...your proposal makes a lot of sense, since those distinctions and vocabulary can be made on a per-country basis in a more useful fashion. I noticed the Dutch category is trying to make a distinction between Universities and Polytechnics, whatever that might be. -- Beland 14:46, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Military merger?

I propose merging Category:Military academies with Category:Military colleges and universities. As far as I can tell from Military academy, they are the same thing. -- Beland 04:27, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've always thought the proper term was "military academy"—why not merge to that one and use that as the subcategory? Postdlf 04:54, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yup, that was my fault. >_< —John | Talk 05:02, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've implemented the merger and move. -- Beland 02:46, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Naming

Category:Universities currently says:

>>Use a subcategory for the universities of a country, using [[Category:(-----) universities]], i.e. [[Category:British universities]] or, preferably, [[Category:Universities of (country name)]], i.e. [[Category:Universities of Finland]] . In the subcategory, include [[Category:Universities]]<<

We should decide on a single convention, no? -- Beland 04:27, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think we should follow the consistent practice evident under Category:Universities and colleges by nationality—"Universities and colleges in [country]". Postdlf 04:54, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, I added a note to Category:Universities and colleges by nationality that: Subcategories should be named according to the convention, "Universities and colleges in country name". Some categories need to be changed over, which I noted on the todo list of that category's talk page. -- Beland 02:46, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)