Talk:Stanford University

Cantonese programs at Stanford

The article says that programs were abolished in 2020 there, yet I still see Cantonese classes offered on the course catalog https://language.stanford.edu/programs-languages/chinese/cantonese and press coverage about how Cantonese classes are offered and fulfilling the language requirement https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/12/cantonese-course-now-fulfills-undergraduate-language-requirement/. Could someone look into this? 2600:1700:368C:110:F92C:B630:24A7:ECC5 (talk) 16:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Good catch. Stanford got some push back and had enough interested students to justify offering Cantonese. I've removed the item though I do think the section on teaching and learning may need to be expanded. Erp (talk) 03:54, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Inclusion of relative prestige in lede

@GuardianH: Can you please say more about why you removed this sentence from the lede of this article?

Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Your edit summary was "remember that anything in the lede needs to have its proper WP:DUE body weight, which this doesn't. Stanford is prestigious, but the article must still conform to policy" but in addition to the sources cited for this sentence the body of the article has a "Reputation and rankings" section that also includes relevant information with many citations. You know the current consensus about this kind of material in the lede of articles as well as anyone so I don't understand your objection. ElKevbo (talk) 02:05, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The sentence suffer(ed) from two key issues. The first was that it wasn't supported by the sources given (and the statement still isn't fully supported by the current source given), and the second is that it lacks the WP:DUE body weight and WP:SYNTHs its conclusion. To support Its "influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities...", the Reputation and rankings section mentioned should:

• 1. Have material explicitly supporting influence making Stanford one of the most prestigious universities. N
• 2. Have material explicitly supporting wealth making Stanford one of the most prestigious universities. N
• 3. Have material explicitly supporting rankings making Stanford one of the most prestigious universities. N
• 4. (Something easily missed) Have disproportional content material to support such a prominent placement in the lede. N

We get monikers and comparisons of Stanford, but nothing about the university's influence; at the very least, nothing about the influence having an impact on its prestige. We don't get anything at all about the university's endowment or funding or the effect it has on its prestige, so an easy fail for 2 — nothing about prestige in the endowment section either. We get rankings in the section, but nothing proving that those rankings make Stanford a prestigious university. Lastly, the section is the second smallest of the six subsections — it's even smaller than the dorm housing section. Even if we were to include it in the lede, it surely would not be in the most prominent lede sentence based off its body weight. In retrospect, the reputation and rankings section doesn't even mention prestige at all.

The section should be expanded to incorporate these aspects, and to actually expound on Stanford's prestige explicitly. GuardianH (talk) 03:00, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Editchecker123 Here's the discussion I was referencing. GuardianH (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @GuardianH for looping me in. It seems that the issue here is that the associated note doesn’t include sources to support the 4 points above. Given it is Stanford, I’m sure substantial sources exist to back each of the 4 points you mention . I think there shouldn’t be an issue including the phrase back in the article with additional reliably-sourced citations? Editchecker123 (talk) 22:54, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

@GuardianH: here are a few references we could add which address this (it did not take much more than a Google Search to pull these 9 reliable sources...I'm sure many more could be found). Do you have any objections to adding back the sentence with these 9 sources quoted in the footnote?

1. Wealth:

• NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/business/stanford-endowment-gain.html
• WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/big-university-endowments-hampered-by-startup-write-downs-77021825
• WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-record-year-university-endowment-returns-drop-into-negative-territory-11667188753

2. Rankings:

• THE: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2024/world-ranking (Stanford is a top 2 university in the world, ahead of Harvard which includes the same sentence in question)
• USN: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities (Stanford tied with Harvard again, which includes the same sentence in question)
• WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/rankings/college-rankings/best-colleges-2024 (Stanford at #4, Harvard at #6, which includes the same sentence in question)

3. Influence:

• NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/education/americas-it-school-look-west-harvard.html ("Stanford University has become America’s “it” school, by measures that Harvard once dominated. Stanford has had the nation’s lowest undergraduate acceptance rate")
• NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/education/stanfords-online-high-school-raises-the-bar.html ("One of our country’s most prestigious universities feels comfortable putting its considerable prestige and brand behind it")
• NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/business/a-clash-of-ideals-and-investments-at-swarthmore.html ("Stanford’s prestige and the size of its endowment...")

Editchecker123 (talk) 23:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

That's a good start. However, to support a claim about ranking highly, we need much more than just a handful of rankings from a single year (unless you're claiming that the university ranked highly in just that year and I don't think that you're making that claim). The assertion would also be greatly strengthened if you were to reference peer-reviewed, scholarly literature, especially literature that demonstrates that this opinion is widely shared (e.g., by many scholars, across several decades). ElKevbo (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @ElKevbo, that's correct (not trying to claim Stanford is only ranked highly this year, plenty of sources to show this goes back in history across the decades). Thinking the following sources would address the points covering multi-decade, widely shared, many scholars, etc...?

• NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/10/archives/harvard-of-the-west-climbing-in-ratings.html (46 years ago in a reliable source – showing Stanford was a direct 1:1 comp to Harvard, which shares the same line as we are debating here)
• JSTOR peer reviewed article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40164963 (23 years ago, demonstrates how other universities want to be like "Harvard or Berkeley or Stanford" in their rankings)
• NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/08/us/how-stanford-wealthy-and-wise-is-cutting-costs-to-stay-that-way.html (33 years ago, entire article is about Stanford's prestige and endowment, how it is the first university to manage its finances the way it does)
• WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113798458553353327 (17 years ago, showing the 3rd largest college endowment: #1 = Harvard, #2 = Yale, #3 = Stanford)
• JSTOR peer reviewed article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40197378 (19 years ago, addresses the entire prestige / ranking point)
• JSTOR peer reviewed article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43773471 (9 years ago, addresses the entire prestige / ranking point)

Editchecker123 (talk) 00:20, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the sources provided could definitely be used to expand the existing reputation section in the body. Though more sources — especially academic ones, like ElKevbo pointed out — should be found demonstrating that these factors make Stanford's reputation. GuardianH (talk) 19:09, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like the sentence has been moved under the reputations and rankings section of Harvard, and on that article it is cited as "examples include" so I think we could do the same thing here: move the sentence to the top of the ranking and reputations section with "examples include" and then citing all of the links above which should be more than sufficient (Harvard only lists 8 sources, some academic, some press). I don't see a problem with that, do you? Editchecker123 (talk) 22:35, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

All this material could — should — be placed in the section, surely. From just a cursory look, it could greatly expand the section by a few lines. After that, we should work from there and if I'm around I wouldn't mind giving the section/sources a review afterwards. GuardianH (talk) 07:16, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@Botanicalgardens500: Why are you edit-warring with multiple editors to remove this well-sourced, pertinent information? In one of your edits, your edit summary was "Needs more sourcing." The material you removed had plenty of sources:

• "Stanford University World Rankings". Times Higher Education.
• "Stanford University Global Rankings". US News.
• "Stanford University World Rankings". QS World University Rankings.</ref><ref>Examples include:

1. Maeroff, Gene. "'Harvard of the West' Climbing in Ratings". The New York Times. "Since World War II, Stanford has enjoyed remarkable success in transforming itself from a good regional institution into one of the country's great private universities."
2. "Rebecca S. Lowen. Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1997. pp. xii, 316". The American Historical Review. 1998. doi:10.1086/ahr/103.5.1721. ISSN 1937-5239.
3. Binder, Amy J.; Abel, Andrea R. (2019). "Symbolically Maintained Inequality: How Harvard and Stanford Students Construct Boundaries among Elite Universities". Sociology of Education. 92 (1): 41–58. doi:10.1177/0038040718821073. ISSN 0038-0407. S2CID 150327748.
4. Selingo, Jeffrey. "Our dangerous obsession with Harvard, Stanford and other elite universities". The Washington Post. "…the Ivy League, along with Stanford, the University of Chicago, Duke, and a few elite public universities such as the University of Michigan, UC-Berkeley, and UNC-Chapel Hill are the pride of the American higher-education system around the world."
5. Newport, Frank (August 26, 2003). "Harvard Number One University in Eyes of Public Stanford and Yale in second place". Gallup. Archived from the original on September 25, 2013. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
6. Wong, Alia (September 11, 2018). "At Private Colleges, Students Pay for Prestige". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on February 26, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2020. Americans tend to think of colleges as falling somewhere on a vast hierarchy based largely on their status and brand recognition. At the top are the Harvards and the Stanfords, with their celebrated faculty, groundbreaking research, and perfectly manicured quads.

Why are you insisting that even more sources be added? ElKevbo (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Great sources, which makes the fact that tapering them onto the lede without first expanding the appropriate Reputation and Rankings section all the more inappropriate without having first giving them coverage in the body and giving their WP:DUE weight. Also, the addition of these rankings is, again, all WP:SYNTH to the statement, and continuing to inject them just adds to the WP:OVERCITE. GuardianH (talk) 01:46, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Got it. I’ll volunteer to work on deepening / expanding the Reputation and Rankings section such that it gives sources (such as the above and others I will research) due weight, then we can write a more fitting lede based on the sources in the body that doesn’t have sources tacked on it. Thanks for asking the question @ElKevbo and providing the clarity @GuardianH. Editchecker123 (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

References