MercuriiMaiae

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Departments - are these all good subjects for independent articles?

Hello. I see you're going through and writing articles on NYU departments. I've been reading through them - I read a lot of new articles - and I'm wondering if they all quite fit WP:BRANCH, the policy on articles on sections of universities. Basically, for an academic department to get its own article, it has to be notable in its own right in terms of news coverage and impact, and I'm starting to wonder if some of the articles you're creating now like NYU Liberal Studies quite reach that. So I would suggest maybe in future just thinking in case some of these wouldn't be better mentioned as part of a bigger article, either on NYU or a list of departments - the reason why I'm wondering is that it's often much easier for users to understand and read through one big article that lists a lot of departments than to sort through a lot of smaller ones.

Otherwise all the best - let me know if any thoughts. Blythwood (talk) 12:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Blythwood. I'll give you a brief explanation of my reasoning here, and please do let me know what you think might be the best way to organize it. I'm currently looking into the globalization of US higher education institutions, and within this (new and rapidly emerging) field, NYU's approach is particularly notable. The university has opened degree-granting campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, as well as local research and teaching sites in 11 other cities. The university regroups the system under the name ‘’Global Network University’’. The initiative has received national US press coverage, and most of the 15 sites receive local and national press coverage in its host country. However, aside from what is published on the university’s website, no encyclopedic information exists elsewhere online to explain the initiative and how it relates to the globalization phenomenon in higher education. I think that certain, long-established sites like NYU Paris warrant their own articles, as they played foundational roles in the exportation of US higher education to third-party countries. The phenomenon has raised critiques of neocolonialism.

Regarding NYU Liberal Studies, I think an article would be necessary to round out the list of NYU’s schools and colleges (Liberal Studies, with a rather large enrolment, was the only missing undergraduate faculty). Its curriculum is noteworthy for adopting that of the Core Curriculum (Columbia College), then adapting it so that first-year undergraduate students might study away at NYU’s global campuses, thus expanding the university’s housing capacity otherwise constrained in New York City and increasing total enrolment (and revenue).

Liberal Studies is oddly integrated into the university structure. It functions as a college independent and in parallel with the New York University College of Arts and Science and the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science under the Faculty of Arts and Science (which does not warrant an article).

What do you think? Perhaps my interest in the subject is too specialized, but I feel that the university’s global initiatives are noteworthy, and not much non-academic, encyclopedia-style literature exists on the subject.

Regards

MercuriiMaiae (talk) 16:36, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply - all that sounds basically good, and I'm glad to hear you're thinking about this kind of thing. I'm still a little concerned given that what's needed for notability is independent coverage - basically, without using a single crumb of information off any "nyu.edu"-domain website, is it still possible to write an article? I sort of feel that the articles you've written are starting to push up against that boundary (the liberal studies article in particular, since all the sources on there right now are NYU-published right now) and I was worried that you'd go on from this to even more obscure things like individual degree courses and get someone suddenly marking it all for deletion. You might want to go back and see if you can find some independent sources for the liberal studies article in particular.
What you've said about neocolonialism critiques sounds interesting; it might be good if you could explicitly cite things making this point on the article, maybe the main NYU one, if it's possible to avoid own research and own synthesis of information. Anyway, all the best and thanks once again for the thoughtful reply. Blythwood (talk) 18:36, 22 March 2016 (UTC)