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![]() | The contents of the Winter Pool page were merged into University of Cambridge on 8 October 2022. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
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![]() | Cambridge Globalist was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 03 February 2015 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into University of Cambridge. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
Two issues there:
I wish to see this page as a GA, but the lead is a mess to me as of now. RoyalRover (talk) 18:14, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
National rankings | |
---|---|
Complete (2025)[33] | 2 |
Guardian (2024)[34] | 2 |
Times / Sunday Times (2024)[35] | 3 |
Global rankings | |
ARWU (2024)[3] | 3 |
QS (2025)[1] | 2 |
THE (2024)[2] | =3 |
At the moment, the article has a single ranking in the first paragraph – the one most favourable to Cambridge. This breeches WP:NPOV. This ranking is also refactored to give a ranking inside Europe rather than over the region for which it was calculated, again breaching WP:NPOV (and giving a number more favourable to Cambridge). Finally, analysis of rankings by Wikipedians to determine that a university is "prestigious" is WP:OR. To remedy the imbalance, it would be necessary to give rankings that "represent a comprehensive cross-section of major rankings by national and international publications" (WP:UNIGUIDE), without drawing conclusions beyond the placing given by the rankings. However, making the first paragraph of the article mostly rankings would be WP:UNDUE, and thus also unacceptable. There is unlikely to be any solution that maintains the rankings in their current position. Robminchin (talk) 03:42, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
The introduction to this article long-referenced that it was one of the world's oldest and most prestigious institutions, and it did that without reference to any of the independent rankings that contributed to that prestige. In my own edits, I sought to bolster the claim by adding the current QS World University Rankings and its most iconic alumni. When one edit suggested that the QS ranking was "cherry picking" (which it isn't, since it is ranked similarly highly presently and previously by the other two major independent rankings), I added the other two (ARWU and Times Higher Education). I've omitted historical rankings, where it has sometimes been ranked as the best university in the world, though that is likely notable.
For the purposes of the intro, the point is this: What are the most notable aspects about this university? Three things: The first is that it is among the oldest (third-oldest) continuously operated university in the world. The second is that is routinely ranks among the best universities in the world by major independent ranking services. The third is that it educated some transformational and iconic historical individuals, which we've singled out in the intro. The first paragraph should make mention to these first two points: its 800-plus year history and the significance of that (as it does currently), and some reference to its global prestige, which is accomplished by either referencing generically that it is ranked among the best and sometimes the best university in the world (along with references) but no specific ranking listed, or listing its current ranking by QS, which is the gold standard of rankings, or all three if necessary. There are three possible suggested options. But the prestige/ranking of the university is its most notable aspect and should not be buried at the bottom of the intro and the intro is certainly not the place to reference every rating, including rankings that do not carry the global credibility attached to QS and, to a lesser but still notable extent, ARWU and Times Higher Education. HarvardStuff (talk) 16:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is among the oldest and most highly-ranked universities in the world.
Cambridge alumni and faculty have won 121 Nobel Prizes, the most of any university in the world, according to the university.[1] Among the university's notable alumni are 47 heads of state, 14 British prime ministers, 11 Field Medalists, seven Turing Award winners, 194 Olympic medal-winning athletes,[2] and several historically iconic and transformational individuals in their respective fields, including Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, John Milton, Vladimir Nabokov, Jawaharlal Nehru, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Alan Turing, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople.[3][4] The two ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In 1231, 22 years after its founding, the university was recognised with a royal charter granted by King Henry III.
The University of Cambridge includes 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties, and other institutions organised into six schools. All of the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, managing their own personnel and policies, and all students are required to have a college affiliation within the university. Undergraduate teaching at Cambridge is centred on weekly small-group supervisions in the colleges with lectures, seminars, laboratory work, and occasionally further supervision provided by the central university faculties and departments.[5][6]
The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Cambridge's 116 libraries hold a total of approximately 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library and one of the world's largest academic libraries.
This has been (correctly) flagged by GunnarBonk as needing a citation. It seems the general theme that Cambridge has been accused of undertaking Iranian weapons research is from an investigation by the Jewish Chronicle earlier this year, reported in (among other places) the Telegraph ] and Varsity. However, the specifics are not bourn out by these – there are 11 universities accused, not just Cambridge, and it is Imperial that is said to have worked on drone engines and Cranfield that is said to have worked on fuzzy logic.
It looks like the text was added by an IP user the day after the article appeared. It seems likely that they mis-interpreted everything as having been done by Cambridge (the Varsity article identifies the Cambridge research as being on graphene and superconductors). For now, I've reduced it to a couple of verifiable sentences – but I think it's worth considering whether inclusion of this is WP:DUE. Robminchin (talk) 00:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
Pinging @Wealthofnation and EmyRussell: who have edited this figures in the past.
I can see where the confusion is arising here. Cambridge University's endowment, as stated in the 2022/23 accounts (the first two references cited, which are actually the same document in two different formats) is £2,469.1m. This is the size of the endowment in accordance with standard accounting practices, giving a common definition of an endowment that is used across the UK, and as verified by independent auditors. This is also the figure that Cambridge reports to the Higher Education Statistics Agency as the size of its endowment.
What, then is the Cambridge University Endowment Fund (CUEF)? As it says in the 2022/23 accounts: "The CUEF is an investment vehicle, which enables the University to pool assets held on trust and invest them for the very long term". It is an investment fund that has been called the "Cambridge University Endowment Fund", but there is no requirement that everything in it is an endowment, rather than other reserves (total reserves, consisting of the endowment, restricted and unrestricted reserves are £7.167.7m), or even that it belongs to Cambridge University – indeed, the accounts tell us that Cambridge University group has £3,735.9m in the CUEF. The third reference tells us that the endowment fund has a value of £4 billion but this is, again, referring to the size of the fund not the size of the endowment.
Using the total size of a fund that happens to be called the 'endowment fund' as the endowment, rather than the actual size of the endowment, is an understandable mistake, but is still a mistake. Robminchin (talk) 16:01, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
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