Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism

This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts: WP:PRESTIGE WP:BOOSTER

This page in a nutshell: Do not praise an academic institution; describe it using neutral language and verifiable facts.

Wikipedia articles on colleges, universities, and other academic institutions are prone to using imprecise weasel words and non-neutral peacock words. The motivation to present institutions in a favorable light is understandable because many of the most committed editors of a university's article are affiliated with that university. However, all Wikipedia articles should strive for neutrality and verifiability. Remember: education and academic research are fundamentally collaborative, not competitive, endeavors.

A Wikipedia article should emphasize what an academic institution has and does rather than what is said about it. Instead of asserting a college or university is one of the best at something, add new content that describes it: visit the website for the archives to expand the information on its history, campus, and traditions, use the fact book or common data set to include more information on the student body and faculty, incorporate information from university reports or a course catalog to describe the administrative organization, academic programs, and research centers, review the Alumni Association website to include additional notable alumni, search news archives for historical coverage of the university, and so on.

Guidelines

Simple guidelines for avoiding academic boosterism include:

• Avoid vague terms of praise. "Prestige", "reputation", "excellence", "exclusivity", and "selectivity" are often used imprecisely, in order to create an impression of an institution's high quality which cannot be verified or falsified. Let the facts speak for themselves - editors should not be trying to "sell", "spin", or otherwise convince readers of the quality of the school. Moreover, a college or university is not necessarily "good" because it excludes a large number of applicants, nor well-reputed simply because it is old, nor prestigious simply because of its alumni. Indeed, a reader might be forgiven for concluding that Wikipedia only covers colleges and universities in Lake Wobegon, where all colleges and universities are above average.
• Do not bury the reader in facts. It is tempting to replace claims of prestige or academic excellence with a cascade of facts intended to generate the same impression (by, for example, listing all faculty members who have won awards). While this is a large improvement over the vague claim, remember that a university article's lead paragraph should be a quick summary of the most important facts about that institution. Move detailed listings of facts deeper into the body of the article.
• If you cite college and university rankings, be concise, precise, and honest. Claims that an institution "places highly" in rankings are just as vague as claims that it is "prestigious" and "excellent," and are more dishonest in that they seem to cite an authoritative source. Rankings should be neutrally worded without modifiers or disclaimers, represent a comprehensive cross-section of rankings by national and international publications, be limited to a single section, and be reported as numeric values with years and verifiable sources. Do not attempt to include every rankings by every publication for every school or program since some rankings are more notable than others. However, do not exclude notable rankings on the basis of not being in the Top X. Similarly, do not modify the context of a published ranking to boost it: If Lake Woebegon State University (LWSU) is ranked 97th nationally among all universities, do not modify this by stating it is the 3rd best public university in Woebegon since this is original research and ultimately misleading if there are only 3 public universities in Woebegon. Finally, do not use rankings in the lead as these are specific facts that should appear later in the article and give undue weight to one publications' rankings or methodologies.
  • Some popular rankings such as U.S. News and World Report's "Best Colleges" rankings rely on undergraduate-only data and are only intended to rank or classify the undergraduate program, not the university as a whole. In this case, it is inaccurate to say that "LWSU is the 97th best university" when LWSU's undergraduate program is actually ranked 97th.
• Boosterism is particularly unpalatable to some Wikipedians when describing institutions whose "elite" status is already widely acknowledged elsewhere. For instance: in an opening summary paragraph, simply noting that a university is "in the Ivy League" or is the "main campus" for a larger university system succinctly establishes that the university is prestigious.

Examples of boosterism

• …is a highly competitive university…
• …is a highly selective college…
• …was ranked 3rd nationally among public universities in western XYZ…
• Amongst the University's highly-ranked schools…
• …has an impressive record in XYZ achievements…
• …is one of the best colleges in …
• …consistently rated among the best…
• No public or private university in the (region) can match the breadth and quality of the university's research endeavors'

See also

• WP:UNI - WikiProject Universities and Colleges
• WP:PEACOCK - Avoid peacock terms
• WP:WEASEL - Avoid weasel words
• WP:NPOV - Neutral point of view
• Template:Infobox US university ranking - Infobox to concisely summarize major publications' university rankings