Talk:College and university rankings

Inclusion or exclusion of Academic Influence
The discussion below began on my User Talk page. I have closed that discussion and copied it here so it can continue in a venue where other editors who edit this article can more easily read and participate. ElKevbo (talk) 03:14, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

This is the first time I'm using Wikipedia's talk feature to try to resolve an editing difference, so please bear with me. A few months ago, I happened to see that Academic Influence (AcademicInfluence.com) had a sub-entry in the Wikipedia article on college and university rankings. I was happy to see that someone had made this subentry because I regard Academic Influence as the most exciting development in college and university rankings of late. I therefore added a few additional references, only to find that the subentry was taken down because user Max Exon said that Academic Influence didn't do international or global rankings of universities. That claim was inaccurate since Academic Influence does indeed rank universities internationally, not only as such but also by discipline. So I reverted the subentry and added further citations indicating that Academic Influence does indeed to global rankings. Several weeks went by, and this time Max Exon removed the Academic Influence subentry on the charge of insufficient notability. On this point, I'm not sure how to resolve the matter. Ahrefs.com, which I use in my web business to asses the domain authority and reach of websites, shows the AcademicInfluence.com keeps pace with some of the other academic rankings organizations mentioned in the article. I was going to add to the article today that Academic Influence is unique among ranking sites (as far as I know) in also ranking academic persons by influence, which has led to many notable academics being interviewed with them, including several Nobel laureates (such as Paul Krugman) and some very big public intellectuals, such as Steven Pinker and Niall Ferguson (https://academicinfluence.com/interviews). At the very least, I think it could be said that AcademicInfluence.com is an up and coming ranking website with high aspirations to be a major and serious player in the college and university ranking world. So if they are not far enough along to merit inclusion in this article, what more do they need to do? A Google search will reveal that Forbes did two articles on them. A Google search will also show that schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia link to them. Would a NYTimes, WSJ, and/or CHE article be the difference maker? Frankly, they take an interesting machine-learning approach to academic rankings, so just on that score, it seems that they merit inclusion. Pudor (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)Pudor
 * I'm not sure we ought to be listing as many individual rankings at college and university rankings as we do, rather than just discussing the concept of rankings and the criticisms (note that there's also college and university rankings in the United States). But if we are to do that, I think you have the beginning of a decent case,, for including that one. The biggest factor for establishing WP:DUEWEIGHT on Wikipedia is coverage in reliable sources, so I'd be interested to see links to the coverage you mentioned. Links from universities themselves don't count for that much since they have an interest in promoting their ranking if they scored well. For Forbes, it matters a lot if it was written by a staff writer or a non-staff contributor, and if the latter, what their credentials are. I'd also be interested to hear from . &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:11, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't mind have some of that article focused on specific ranking systems. I do think that the current article does a terrible job demonstrating that many of the ranking systems that are discussed are indeed noteworthy. This is a topic that is the focus of scholarly work so that should be our primary source of information, especially in a topic like this that is rife with self-promotion by both ranking systems and the institutions that are highly ranked in them. ElKevbo (talk) 02:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * ElKevbo, any suggestions on which scholarly sources to use? In the popular press, Malcolm Gladwell's article is the best I've come across, but Gladwell certainly isn't an education scholar, so I'm sure there are better options available. I'd love to see our coverage of this area improved—when people turn to Wikipedia for information on rankings, as they inevitably will, they should be presented with an informed, encyclopedic analysis of how they're viewed by experts, rather than just a parroting of the latest results.
 * On a related note, I just started this merge proposal, which may be of interest. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 02:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the late reply. There are a lot of scholarly sources - journal articles, books, white papers, dissertations, etc. - on this topic and they should be our preferred sources, particularly those written and reviewed by higher education experts. ElKevbo (talk) 03:18, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest that for the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings, only relevant enough and not any ranking should be listed. Academic Influence is not influencial enough. Max Exon (talk) 07:47, 15 December 2021 (UTC)Max
 * It's kind of ironic that Max Exon sees Academic Influence as not influential enough when it's claim to fame, such as it is, consists in analyzing academic influence. So how can we resolve our difference? Max Exon has removed the Academic Influence subentry twice. I've re-listed it twice. I don't see us seeing eye to eye, so who gets to decide? By the way, the two Forbes articles were written by Mike Nietzel, a past president of Missouri State University (https://www.missouristate.edu/president/nietzel.htm#:~:text=Dr.-,Michael%20T.,University%20of%20Kentucky%2C%20including%20Provost). Also, I see that Malcolm Gladwell was favorably listed above. In that New Yorker piece cited, Gladwell extols Jeffrey Stake, a law professor at Indiana University, for taking on the USNews rankings. Jed Macosko, the president of Academic Influence (and a physics professor at Wake Forest), does an interview with Stake here: https://www.expensivity.com/unreasonable-sway-of-school-rankings. They both seem on the same page. I guess I wonder what Max Exon is looking for in terms of significance? Does any other ranking site have a YouTube channel with academic luminaries on it like this: https://www.youtube.com/c/AcademicInfluence/videos ? It bears pointing out again that Max Exon removed the Academic Influence entry not on the grounds of significance but of relevance, incorrectly claiming that the site did not do international rankings, which it does. Now it's insufficient significance. How does the significance question get decided? Pudor (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Re who gets to decide, Wikipedia works based on a consensus process, so it's basically whichever side has the most support, but unfortunately for you the status quo (non-inclusion) is retained until discussion reaches consensus. ElKevbo or I could be the tiebreaker if you can convince either of us to take a more firm stance. What I'm looking for is evidence that Academic Influence meets the general notability guideline, since even though this isn't about a standalone page for Academic Influence, I'd want to see comparable evidence of significance to consider it due weight for its own section rather than just listed briefly in the "other rankings" section (which could be a compromise). To meet GNG, I'd need to see at least two links with significant coverage of Academic Influence in reliable, independent (meaning not affiliated with Academic Influence or plugging a school ranked by it) secondary sources. Best, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 16:24, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this reply Sdkb. I don't mean to be contentious, and an apology is due to Max Exon: it makes sense that the benefit of the doubt would go toward exclusion rather than inclusion of novel material. In trying to make a case for Academic Influence's inclusion, let me therefore offer the following three links to substantial articles that address AcademicInfluence.com:
 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/03/07/academic-influence-ranks-the-best-community-colleges-nationally-and-by-state/?sh=2e97cc5a674b
 * https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/01/27/new-ranking-system-lists-swarthmore-as-nations-1-liberal-arts-college/?sh=3e59df3240ee
 * https://www.expensivity.com/most-influential-economics-programs-and-economists/
 * If that's not enough, I can do some more searching. Pudor (talk) 19:47, 15 December 2021 (UTC)Pudor
 * I do think this is not enough, you should list direct argumentation about the ranking's relevance directly based on its indicators and the fiability of those instead of listing secondary/tertiary sources Max Exon (talk) 13:18, 16 December 2021 (UTC)Max
 * I strongly disagree with that. It's not our role to evaluate rankings and to judge their worthiness. We're an encyclopedia that neutrally documents topics of significance, and the way we determine significance is by coverage in reliable secondary sources. So that's really the only main criterion here that is supported by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. IAR, I might give a tiny bit of preference to rankings that have a more novel methodology or a less subjective one, just in the interest of balance, but that's a far lesser concern than the coverage.
 * From the links provided so far, I lean very slightly toward inclusion, but I'd much prefer something stronger. Forbes contributors' work is not checked in an editorial review process, so it is not generally considered reliable. And I have concerns about Expensivity because it does not appear to have any established reputation and its authors seem to write under pen names rather than being willing to associate their identities with their work. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Sdkb's summary in the first paragraph above is accurate: We rely on what other published, trusted sources ("reliable" in Wikipedia jargon with strong considerations for "due weight"). If editors are spending a lot of time digging into primary sources and making novel judgments, that's usually a really bad sign that something has gone wrong and we're trying to write about something that we should be writing about.
 * That does mean that we often lag behind the latest developments in many areas as we have to wait for others to make their own judgments and evaluations and then publish them in reliable sources. That can sometimes be unsatisfying but it's the price we pay for operating an encyclopedia that is written and maintained by an immense collection of poorly coordinated amateurs. ElKevbo (talk) 03:24, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

https://academicinfluence.com/about/methodology
 * to answer your remark, there were 2 reasons for removing the section. The first one was that I thought it didn't list international rankings, you did disprove that. However the second issue is unrelated to this and I agree with Sdkb. Max Exon (talk) 13:14, 16 December 2021 (UTC)Max
 * the ranking's mention of its methodology is obscure; it doesn't give any weights of its factors for instance https://academicinfluence.com/about/methodology Max Exon (talk) 13:42, 16 December 2021 (UTC)Max
 * I guess Max and I are going to disagree. The methodology article that he cites seems meant to be quite general, without getting into the nuts and bolts of what Academic Influence is doing. More compelling, it seems to me, is the article about their influence ranking engine: https://academicinfluence.com/about/influence-ranking-engine. And then there's its white paper describing their "new philosophy of academic ranking," which makes the point that they are using influence as a master criterion, and thus NOT going to be weighting a lot of different criteria (see https://academicinfluence.com/about/new-ranking-philosophy). So it seems we still have no consensus, and if anything I'm now finding myself more in disagreement with Max Exon. The claim that I'm citing secondary sources, as though that counts against including Academic Influence as a subentry in the Wikipedia article in question, seems unreasonable. If the NYTimes writes an article on Academic Influence, it will be in the same vein as those cited. As for the nuts and bolts about their algorithm and machine learning approach, it's on their website (see the about pages, especially those I cited just now), and these to me seem compelling that they are doing something significant and novel in the academic ranking business. So how does this all get resolved?Pudor (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems that with the holidays, we've all been away from this topic. I still favor of including Academic Influence as a subentry in this article. As it is, the subentry was created by ; I simply added to it later. Max Exon then deleted it, first for incorrectly claiming that Academic Influence doesn't do international rankings, and then, when I reinstated it because they do indeed international rankings, by charging a lack of notability. This is a bit more subjective ground. It would be nice to see better than Forbes. Certainly it would be great if the WSJ or NYT had a nice piece on Academic Influence, and that would probably clinch it. But the novelty of their approach to academic ranking and the notice that they've gotten to date suggest to me that it is appropriate to include this subentry. Also, does it make any difference that some very notable professors are giving Academic Influence favorable notice. e.g., Harvard economist Greg Mankiw (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2020/09/call-me-3380.html) or that certain publications cite their rankings of academic influencers favorably, e.g., https://www.marconisociety.org/magazine/forging-accessible-path-higher-education-dr-zvi-galil-on-georgia-tech-online-masters-program/. Granted, these rankings of individuals don't count as rankings of schools, but according to Academic Influence, it's the rankings of individuals that get aggregated in forming its ranking of schools. At what point are we ready to put this for a vote?Pudor (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

As I said before, secondary/tertiary sources are not sufficient. Please do not ping the admins/moderators again before finding a primary source, it's to say a clear report directly about the methodology. Otherwise, it's just making admins/moderators waste their time and I hope I won't need to remind you about this again. Also, please note that both of the links you listed are invalid; the first one is redirecting to a homepage instead of a presumed article about academic influence. The second one is completely talking about another subject as well (it is talking about Georgia tech's masters program). Max Exon (talk) 16:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)Max

Help me to understand your authority in this debate. I'm new to these sorts of discussions, but it seems that you are as much an outsider to this page as I am and that Sdkb and ElKevbo are the ones deciding whether Academic Influence ultimately ends up on this page. But here's my bigger question for you: What are primary references that in your mind justify the other entries on this list? Give me some examples of what would be acceptable references, for instance for the Leiden ranking. Pudor (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
 * There is no seniority among Wikipedia editors; this project operates on the basis of consensus among its volunteer editors.
 * You are correct that some other rankings already in this article may not have sufficient references to justify their inclusion; this is a volunteer-driven project and our standards and practices can often be very uneven. You are welcome to propose removing those rankings but it might not win you any friends here if you are perceived as doing so out of spite or in retaliation. ElKevbo (talk) 22:30, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I second ElKevbo on seniority. In practical terms, consensus usually means a majority, but not always.
 * @Max Exon, I'm not sure why you're asking for primary sources. Primary sources do not count toward due weight, since they're too closely affiliated with the subject and therefore do not help demonstrate interest in it from the wider world. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@ElKevbo It seems we're at an impasse. My own view is that with electronic media, it's safer to err on the side of "too much" rather than "too little" if there's a danger of missing out on something interesting and important. I, personally, believe that would be the case with Academic Influence. Indeed, I don't see any other ranking company taking quite its approach. Moreover, I would not, as a matter of spite want to remove other ranking companies mentioned in this article, even though some of them have websites with traffic and domain authority LESS THAN that of Academic Influence. It seems that all the ranking organizations mentioned in this article are noteworthy and are treating rankings as a serious enterprise rather than as a facile way to make money (there are lots of sites like that, and clearly they shouldn't be cited in this article). So where does that leave us? We've been at this for over a month. Max Exon is not budging. And I'm not budging. Presumably, consensus does not mean unanimity (otherwise nothing would ever get done). So that means there has to be some sort of vote. I'd therefore like to put the inclusion of Academic Influence in his article up for a vote (I'm sorry if this is not the customary way of putting things, but I remain new to these discussions). Also, if the vote goes against me, I'd like to know what benchmarks Academic Influence needs to attain in order to be worthy of inclusion on this list. Max Exon referred to "primary sources," which Sdkb rightly noted was an inappropriate criterion for inclusion. I'm sorry it's come to this. I really don't like to be contentious, but it seems to me unfair to exclude Academic Influence from this list. Pudor (talk) 14:45, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to launch an RfC. (You may want to propose a draft of it first; a poorly written RfC - it's a weird genre that is unfamiliar to nearly everyone! - can be more harmful than helpful and result in more confusion than help.) ElKevbo (talk) 22:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and set up an RfC as a step toward resolving this question., what this means is that uninvolved editors will come by and give their view, and sometime likely after 30 days it'll be closed by another uninvolved editor if needed and the consensus result implemented. Most editors who come by aren't going to read the long discussion above, so I'd recommend giving a concise version of your argument for inclusion when you !vote in the survey section. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Academic Influence
Should the Academic Influence rankings be included in this article? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Survey (Academic Influence)

 * Neutral. I'm setting up this RfC as a member of WP:HED. Per the discussion above, I think the article as a whole ought to be restructured to focus less on individual rankings, especially niche ones, and more on the overall concept. For the present article scheme, the sourcing evidence presented so far of coverage of the Academic Influence rankings is rather marginal, not too different from some of the other rankings that are also included despite marginal sourcing. If this were included, I'd want it to be given only a sentence or very short paragraph, as anything more would be undue weight. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No Insufficient evidence has been provided that this relatively new ranking system has been widely published about in reliable sources. (The same thing might be said about other rankings in this article; I would advocate for removing them, too.) ElKevbo (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No, obviously with Caltech at #31 it's bullshit. Dicklyon (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Neutral – obviously that was in jest, and they rank Caltech #1 for "concentrated influence", so can't be all that bad. I don't really know enough to comment. Dicklyon (talk) 01:42, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * obviously, this earns you a with a wet trout per WP:SARCASM. Cheers, &#123;{u&#124;  Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 01:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Delicious! Dicklyon (talk) 02:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Decline, per above, insufficient evidence. Severe  storm  28  00:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes I think a sentence or short paragraph is acceptable. The rankings seem to be in good faith, and decent source fora reader to land on if their interested in the subject. Comatmebro (talk) 05:05, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, because it was mentioned in several verified third-party sources. To have an entry to Wikipedia rejected on the ground of the opinion of an editor is incompatible with Wikipedia's spirit of democratization of knowledge. 20thCenturyBorn (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * To what "verified third-party sources" are you referring? ElKevbo (talk) 02:57, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Splitting proposal
I propose that the page is split into International university rankings and National rankings of colleges and universities. These two types are very different from each other, and it is very cumbersome to describe and discuss them on the same page.

Fitzgunnar (talk) 13:04, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I declined Draft:International University Rankings until consensus is gained here for the split. If there is consensus to split, there is no need for the draft to go through AfC.  S0091 (talk) 15:35, 20 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Support: the page is too long to read comfortably and it'd benefit from splitting; ideally, the present page would be retained in summary style. fgnievinski (talk) 18:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose: on the basis that the current draft that it seems we are being asked to approve is not correctly described by this split proposal. 'International' and 'national' is a different split from that currently implemented on the page here, which is 'global' vs 'regional and national' but, as currently written, the Draft:International University Rankings is entirely about global rankings, not international rankings. It also ignores the community consensus (see discussion above) on splitting out the major rankings from other rankings, and the separate listing of specific and defunct rankings. While there may be good arguments for this, a split proposal should be a proposal to split the page, not to re-write it. Put forward a simple proposal to split the page first, then discuss whatever changes you feel are needed. Robminchin (talk) 20:04, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Lovely to get some opinon on this! Thanks! And sure, we can leave the splitting for now, and instead focus on re-structuring the current page.
 * The article divides the rankings into two main groups: 'Global' and 'National and regional'. My suggestion is to structure the rankings into 'International' (including regional) and 'National'. The reason is that the methods, uses and discussions of national rankings are very different from those of international rankings. This is actually the main reason to why I suggested splitting the page, because when you discuss and describe rankings you always have to talk about national rankings on one hand and international rankings on the other.
 * Currently, the group 'Global rankings' is divided into 'Major international', 'Other global', 'Specific' and 'Defunct'. You suggest that there is a community consensus to put some rankings into a separate group 'Major rankings', but if you refer to the section 'Top rankings' on this page, I really don't see much consensus. Mostly, I see people arguing about which rankings should go into the group 'Major rankings'. I agree that some rankings have a lot more influence than others, but I have no way of measuring that or giving a good reference to which ones should be in that group. (The reference given above, (Olcay& Bulu 2017), is not good. They have no support for their claim.) And I don't see the need for putting the 'major rankings' in a separate group. The argument given for doing this, above, is that it 'is simply not the way the world works'. That is not even an argument. And, again, how do we decide which rankings should go into the 'Major' group?
 * The category 'Specific rankings' I don't understand at all. What is specific about them?
 * The category 'Defunct rankings' is almost impossible to maintain, since there are so many rankings that have been published once or twice and then not again. The list will always be very incomplete. You could possible have a category 'Some defunct rankings', but it is a strange group. I would suggest removing these rankings from the article altogether.
 * Further, the current page puts all rankings from the same company/organisation together. That makes little sense from a reader perspective. QS has a whole lot of rankings, some global, some regional, some for individual subjects, some for specific aspects such as sustainability or graduate employability. The fact that they are produced by the same company is less interesting. It is an article about rankings, not ranking producers.
 * Also, the current draft for International university rankings is not entirely about global rankings. It is about international rankings, including for example 'European Research Ranking', 'QS Asian University Rankings', and 'QS Latin American University Rankings'. Fitzgunnar (talk) 10:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey would you consider instead a !vote for support for a proper split if it followed the guidelines at WP:PROPERSPLIT. I bring this to your attention because the drafts that you cited as your concern have been denied (1 and 2), and subsequent guidance for  (both here, here and here) has told them to not go through the AfC process, but instead follow the policy on splitting.
 * I think given the recent developments and your reasoning for !opposing, we could eliminate the editorializing of the differences introduced by the draft articles and instead reach a consensus for the true split of the article as it exists now.
 * I think it would be beneficial to have a split as the current article is too long, and then (and only then) improvements can go ahead on all 3 articles. Let us know your thoughts, or if you have any outstanding concerns. All the best, microbiology Marcus (petri dish&bullet;growths) 19:11, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that's more what I was envisioning. I agree that a split would be beneficial, it was the specifics of the proposed split and the rolling in of the other changes under the banner of splitting (even if these other changes might also be good, they should be discussed) that I was opposed to. Robminchin (talk) 21:00, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Thanks to both of you for your patience. Fitzgunnar (talk) 07:24, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support for a proper split per WP:PROPERSPLIT and then all 3 articles can be improved upon independently. microbiology Marcus (petri dish&bullet;growths) 17:13, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Addition of Global University Visibility Rankings
NYMediaGuy has begun an edit war to add a lengthy new section about the Global University Visibility Rankings. Setting aside the fact that the text they've added is bizarrely formatted (e.g., embedded HTML tags instead of Wikmedia markup), they have not provided sources that provide convincing evidence that this new ranking system is being taken seriously by scholars and experts. In addition to a link to the ranking website, they provide a link to a blog post discussing the new rankings, a local newspaper article bragging about the ranking of a local university, a press release from that same university, and a link to the U.S. copyright office. The newspaper article is likely directly derived from the press release as it quotes the press release (which is very sloppy, lazy journalism). The text added by NYMediaGuy claims that "The GUV rankings have been awarded a U.S. copyright, emphasizing the originality and proprietary methodology of the rankings" but that appears to be an overstatement and a misunderstanding of copyright law.

None of this provides convincing evidence that scholars and experts are taking this ranking seriously and that it meets WP:DUE. It's definitely not something that NYMediaGuy should be edit-warring to add to this article without any attempts at communication (not even an edit summary!). ElKevbo (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I had a quick look at the ranking's web pages, and it's clearly non-serious – the coverage of universities outside of the US is limited to a few famous ones to give it a veneer of being international rather than an actual attempt at an international ranking. As noted in a recent reversion, this looks like promotional editing. Robminchin (talk) 21:20, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that the rankings are being taken seriously and most of the universities in the ranking are indeed global (700 in total). But if you feel that it is not relevant than I will leave it alone. NYMediaGuy (talk) 11:34, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * 700 universities, of which around 600 are from the US. You'll forgive me if I'm sceptical that the University of Warwick has a smaller visibility than any of those 600, and that after ten universities in the top 156 there are no other UK universities in the top 700. The ten from the UK that are in the 'top 700' match exactly the UK top ten in the USNWR ranking – it looks like they've simply taken these and thrown them (and even smaller numbers from other universities) in the mix to give it a fake international flavour. This isn't a serious ranking, it's a marketing tool that they're using to try to sell their consultancy business. Robminchin (talk) 17:56, 5 March 2024 (UTC)