Talk:Higher education in the United States/Archive 2

The lead
WP:MOSLEAD is our guideline on writing a lead. There is scope for creativity but we are looking for four paragraphs that summarize the contents of the article. The first line is important as it defines the scope of the article, the first paragraph will be displayed everytime anyone makes a google search so must be a very concise overview. The next three paragraphs must be a simple synopsis that will satisfy the casual reader (say a middle school student) anywhere worldwide. General material must be in the body of the article. There is room for improvement here I think. --ClemRutter (talk) 11:16, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point. CollegeMeltdown (talk) 11:04, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Traffic
Can we find out how often this article is being viewed? I would hope that as this article is improved, this article and related articles (e.g. articles on student loan debt) will get more views. That's not to say, however, that we should frame only for attention CollegeMeltdown (talk) 11:10, 22 June 2019 (UTC)


 * See Pageview_statistics - MrOllie (talk) 12:51, 22 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you MrOllie.

Reducing the length of the article -a strategy
and other interested colleagues. This artcle is huge, attempts have been made in the past to spin off sections into separate articles, and over the years new material has been added both to the spin off and to recreate a new bloated section. While I see this as the parent article discussing the structure of Tertiary education, that should be quite small- others see it as a big trash can where any new issue vaguely relating unis is exposed.

Being WP:BOLD is one thing, but the editors working here are conscientious and chasing a dead reference can take a whole evening, the task is just too big. What we need is for someone who has not contributed in the past does some massive moves, without clearing up the loose ends. This what I am proposing to do. I need someone to cover my back!

I propose to move text to the talk pages of the sub-articles that exist, so it can be merged later. I propose to create new sub-articles where they don't and MV the text. I will give my best shot to name the new articles correctly- using precedent but I expect to get many wrong. I have my MOS by my side! I expect to cull a lot of wikilink hooks- sorry. Unreferenced content is likely to disappear- it can be recovered, referenced and restored at a later date. Text that is off focus will be MV to some talkpage. It seems strange to work this way- but this massive article just doesn't work- please demonstrate that there is another way before I start. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:25, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * ClemRutter, thanks for the heads up. I appreciate your good work and expertise and agree with you, mostly. Please be careful.CollegeMeltdown (talk) 17:40, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I think it's worth a shot! (I expect that this fits into the natural life-cycle of an article like this where it slowly grows cumbersome and fragmented as many editors make small changes before one editor or a very small group overhaul the article to bring it back to a unified vision and voice when the cycle begins anew as editors then begin making additions and changes...)
 * If it's helpful, I'm reading David Labaree's A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education (2017, University of Chicago Press) and it's a really good, approachable summary of the history and organization of U.S. higher education. It's very well-organized and many of its ideas could serve as good hooks or frameworks for this kind of very broad article.
 * (Personally, I've always hoped that someone teaching a graduate-level higher education course would assign this and similar articles to students as assignments. It would be very helpful for us to get fresh eyes on these challenging articles and in the right kinds of courses and academic programs the activity of "explain this very complicated thing to a lay audience in only a few pages of text" would be really, really good.) ElKevbo (talk) 17:57, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

ElKevbo and ClemRutter, funny, this is what happens with $150 college textbooks for intro to whatever, devolving into bloated volumes with lots of irrelevant material. I better save the reference section before it's edited. What do you think about all the pictures? Do we really need all those images? Are they really representative of higher education when the most common form of higher ed is community colleges?CollegeMeltdown (talk) 18:10, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the support. It does take time and I need to take mini-wiki breaks occasionally to sleep and do a bit of real life - but I will continue. Should we spin off the further reading section into an article List of academic works on Higher education in the United States? ClemRutter (talk) 08:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

ClemRutter, excellent job and thanks for keeping essential elements. You should get a prize for this. I have no problem if you have a separate page for further reading. As a historical sociologist, I do want to keep one small section, the section on Enslavement in Higher Education. There is a growing body of knowledge on how essential this is on the early history of US higher education. I would also like us to consider the images in this page, because it doesn't reflect the reality of higher education for most people. CollegeMeltdown (talk) 13:19, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Just found these section! Thanks for the kind comments. Good to know your historical sociology background- mine was computer science education, at secondary level. Still a lot of work to do here, we need to accept that his is a huge article and we need to pare it down to the core and resist the temptation to expand out own area but leave the links to really precise new articles. On the specifics. Images- should only be included if they relate and add to the text. Otherwise we have galleries which are probably not appropriate in an article of this status..ClemRutter (talk) 07:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

One other thing. Should we combine subsections? For example, consolidating "colleges", "community colleges", and "vocational colleges"?CollegeMeltdown (talk) 13:44, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I spend more time offline pondering what we are doing than I do at the keyboard. I am so comfortable in working cooperatively with editors I respect. Longevity is important, as is clear thinking. I expect and accept reversions and being wrong. Personally at the moment I would leave the subsections as they are and continue to get rid of the dross within but I think eventually this will happen ClemRutter (talk) 07:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

ClemRutter, thanks again for your yeoman's work. Please keep up the good work. I'm going to try to avoid making edits until you are done, but I do want to take a look after you are done. There is no rush, but can you give me a head's up when you do complete the effort? Thanks.CollegeMeltdown (talk) 13:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I am aiming for an article size of about 92000 (random number). Real life does get in the way and slow me down. There is a lot of text that has been moved into sub articles- which in turn are dire and need some TLC. But do join in here too, we are colleagues working on a draft task, I may revert but so can you it is an edit process not a personal attack. Thanks for all the thanks. ClemRutter (talk) 07:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Entry into higher education- help needed
The one thing the article misses is how it gets its students- which must be obvious stateside, but needs to be said to globalise. I have done a bit of creative writing, but do need someone who is in the system to rewrite it having the benefit of knowledge. I am certain that having defined and discussed credits it will make it easier to tie together the rest of the article. I am uncomfortable doing this - or writing anything that is not bolted down with WP:RS Help please. --ClemRutter (talk) 18:46, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
 * ClemRutter, This is a very important topic as enrollments decline and competition heats up. Does section on the "Educational pipeline" help?  Are you also talking about college recruiting, scholarships, and legacies? Also are you talking about advertising and marketing?CollegeMeltdown (talk) 11:02, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Before we discuss an issue we must describe what it is!. Our role is to provide a definitive frame of reference- that others can use when they get round to discussing it. (And in the current context that includes most of the media- and most politicians and their advisors). An educational pipeline is not defined in the article and I can imagine what it means- so we need to spell it out. [this artilce] has a section on an instance of K-12 pipeline for Ohio but no sourced definition.
 * All the things you describe sound important but will need a separate articles eventually I suspect Lets get this right first. More later when I have had a think.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 --ClemRutter (talk) 18:04, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * A month ago or so, I had a small section called "Education pipeline" that must have been deleted. I believe it included K-12, immigrants and foreign students, and non-traditional students.CollegeMeltdown (talk) 18:51, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This appears to be covered in Education in the United States where we find some of the same text- perhaps we could use it as a guideline.ClemRutter (talk) 09:20, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

The Educated Underclass, Oversupply, and the Gig Economy
I suggest that we develop a section on higher education and the growing US educated underclass in this gig economy. Gary Roth's The Educated Underclass (2019) is the latest book that details the growing oversupply of people with college education. This theme of oversupply is not new. As Roth points out, Harvard economist Richard Freeman described this phenomenon as early as 1976, in his book The Overeducated American. CollegeMeltdown (talk) 12:24, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Need updates on enrollment, revenues, etc
This article's numbers are getting stale. Enrollment, for example, only goes to 2016-2017. --CollegeMeltdown (talk) 17:44, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Need a section on alcohol and drug abuse in US higher education
Alcohol and drug abuse have been serious concerns on US college campuses for generations. We need a section on this topic, as it is also related to other issues, such as fraternity hazing and sexual assault.

According to the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, "more than one-third of full-time college students aged 18 to 22 engaged in binge drinking in the past month; about 1 in 5 used an illicit drug in the past month." The report added that "on an average day during the past year, 2,179 full-time college students drank alcohol for the first time, and 1,326 used an illicit drug for the first time."


 * Feel free to add the section; it seems you already have the necessary sources. Also, please sign your posts on talk pages, so that other users can see your username and when the comment was made. Just type four tildes (~) at the end of your posts, and it will automatically fill in the appropriate information. Finnigami (talk) 18:43, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Heightened cash monitoring
is linked from a few articles and it redirects to a non-existent section here. The current revision of this article doesn't mention that mechanism at all. Please integrate the relevant information into the article, or update the redirect possibly converting it to a separate article if it doesn't belong here. –MwGamera (talk) 07:06, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Republishing without attribution
Blatant copying from Wikipedia, on multiple pages, probably to boost rankings.

14:15, 3 September 2021 (UTC)152.78.0.22 (talk)
 * Can you be more specific? --CollegeMeltdown (talk) 17:35, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Stale graphics
There are two graphics at the beginning of the article that show numbers from 2012. Are they too obsolete to be included? Looks like FRED has an update to 2019, but I'm not sure how to make the fix. I guess you have to download the FRED data then upload it to Wikidata, then to this article, so that the PNG fits just right? CollegeMeltdown (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Should I go ahead and delete the two old graphics? --CollegeMeltdown (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Was there a mass deletion on the Talk page?
Was there a mass deletion on the Talk page? I thought I remembered a great deal of effort to have a discussion here, and there is evidence of that by looking at the View History of this Talk section. --CollegeMeltdown (talk) 19:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)


 * If you are talking about WP:ARCHIVE then nothing is lost. The bot moves old discussions to subpages to keep the talk page more manageable. The talk header template at the top displays a search box and a list of the archived subpages. This is a standard practice for lengthy talk pages. –MwGamera (talk) 08:37, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Functional illiteracy, innumeracy, and the K-12 pipeline
Kleuske, obviously, functional illiteracy and innumeracy in the US have a profound effect on US higher education, especially for community colleges. Instead of deleting this section, how about beefing it up? --CollegeMeltdown (talk) 23:14, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I reverted this edit because Those with a better "pedigree" are more likely to be hired for the best jobs. is too vague to be relevant. "Pedigree" (in scarequotes) can mean anything, from dog-breeds to someones ancestry, and getting a job or not is not something that belongs in an article on Higher education in the US. That's a job-market issue. It simply does not belong in the article.
 * this edit makes a claim that is unsupported by the source, an article on innumeracy in the legal professions.
 * Then I removed the rest, because, alarming as these numbers are, they have nothing to do with "higher education". Kleuske (talk) 12:15, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Kleuske, given the numbers that were presented, how can functional illiteracy and innumeracy not be problems for US higher education? How can you compartmentalize this issue as just a pre-K to 12 issue? Lower education is the major pipeline to higher education. People who work in US community colleges and for-profit colleges, especially, understand the extent of the problem. But even professors who teach grad students have to deal with students who cannot grasp important concepts. As for the pipeline leading out of higher education, the labor force, how can you say "getting a job" has nothing to do with higher education?  According to survey results from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA, it has been the most reason Americans have been going to college for decades. In the 2019 freshman survey, 83 percent of the respondents gave "to be able to get a better job" as a "very important" reason for going to college (see page 42). I really do want to understand your perspective. Perhaps we have differences in perspective because of age, nationality, and/or social class?

CollegeMeltdown (talk) 20:00, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Let me put it this way: if you can't read, basic education has failed you. If you read poorly, it's pretty much the same. The subject would be fine in an article on basic education, but not here. I also note that none of the sources presented here, even mention "illiteracy". Please do not send me on wild goose chases. You just waste time. A cite is only good if it actually supports your claim. Your cites here and in the article are mere adornment, without any actual value. Kleuske (talk) 09:21, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Kleuske, do these articles from Diverse Issues in Higher Education provide any evidence? "The American Association of Community Colleges estimates approximately 60 percent of students coming out of high school each year are not ready for college level work." This article by a Detroit Free Press writer gives some examples of the problem.
 * (e/c)*3 The American Association of Community Colleges estimates approximately 60 percent of students coming out of high school each year are not ready for college level work. Did you actually read the article? If something needs to be remedied (as in remedial teaching) did it go wrong when the remedy is applied or before that? Besides, needing remedial teaching is not the same as illiteracy. Kleuske (talk) 12:43, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - FA22 - Sect 200 - Thu
— Assignment last updated by Janyu150 (talk) 03:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Higher education in the United States
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Higher education in the United States's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Simkovic": From Higher Education Act of 1965: Michael Simkovic, Risk-Based Student Loans (2013) From Higher education:  From Higher education bubble in the United States: Michael Simkovic, Risk-Based Student Loans (2012) 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 00:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Climate Change
There should be a section on US higher education and global climate change. Bryan Alexander's "Universities on Fire" details some of the dramatic effects likely to occur. Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 17:05, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Merge section
same topic: fgnievinski (talk) 19:48, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Higher_education
 * Higher_education_in_the_United_States


 * I strongly support removing this US-centric section from the general HE article and merging it into this article, where it clearly belongs. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:08, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 12:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Since the section on types was moved to this article, it looks like some of the sections haven't been updated to reflect the U.S. context specifically. The sections on engineering, visual and performing arts, vocational schools and professional education are highly generic and even reference a European framework (which is irrelevant). My question is if it's worth writing U.S.-specific sections for e.g. what an engineering school is, or if they could be adequately covered under "Universities." I lean towards the latter. Kalewrap (talk) 13:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)