Talk:University of Edinburgh

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Contents 1 Fairtrade status? 2 Student & Staff numbers 3 Alumnus: Augustus de Morgan? 4 Latin orthography 5 JK Rowling 6 Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year: Edinburgh or Dundee? 7 Ancient universities of Scotland 8 Colleges and Schools 9 Prominent students (current) 10 Pictures 11 University ratings

[edit] Fairtrade status?

The article currently says, in the first paragraph: "In 2003 Edinburgh became the first Scottish university to be awarded Fairtrade status." Neither the fair trade article nor the fairtrade labelling article seems to shed much light on what "fairtrade status" indicates for a university, or what organization would grant such a designation; nor is this elaborated on in the article. Could someone please provide more information on this subject? --LostLeviathan 14:13, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It similar to the idea of a Fairtrade Town/city/zone etc. Maybe we need Fairtrade University as a redirect to Fairtrade Town? The status is granted by the Fairtrade Foundation. There's more details of fairtrade unis on Oxfam's website [1] Vclaw 01:23, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Student & Staff numbers

When the infobox was first inserted about 10 days ago, it was put that UoE have 20,000 students with 4,300 of those PG. I changed it to c. 23,000 with 5,000 PG because I keep hearing 22,000 every time there's a student election or during the NUS referendum, so one would think 22,000, or at least higher than 20,000. However, if one add up the Electorate number in the breakdown for the NUS referendum result, one actually get as high as 24,000. Hence my choice of about 23,000 halfway and all that. Recently, I heard / read independently of here 23,000 being mention. Today, I've finally, finally find some figures on a UoE website. One would think Registry website would have it or at least it can be find somewhere off the mainpage. But if you try to search for it, good luck to you. Anyway, the figures I see is from the Communications & Public Affairs. This figures turns out to match those initially entered into the infobox. However, as one can see immed., it's from way back to Jan 20001.

So the question is, does anyone actually have some up to date figures to how many students & teaching staff this university actually have?? -- KTC 10:17, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

(And typical of me pressing minor accidently when I don't mean it *rolleyes*)

I used to work for Durham Students' Union (as did a couple of other wikipedians, including their current President...); we spent ages trying to find a definitive list of students. (We needed it to implement an online voting system, so we could authenticate which usernames were students and which, well, weren't). Despite the presence of what looked like a detailed online list, there was an impressively fluid number, once you started including or excluding postgraduates, or part-time students, or research students, or postgrads on continuation (ie writing up), or finalists who hadn't completed and were still in the system, or the way one-year foreign students often "persisted" on the computer for a term or two...

I'm sorry that's not much direct help, but it puts the problem in context; most universities end up just picking a number. You may find that the SU has weird membership which may not directly map to that of the university; we had a huge leap (as in, several thousand) around 2000/2001 when part-time students started being counted. As such, I'd be a bit leery about using their figures as preferential to the University ones - also, you seem to have assumed that no postgrads are members of the SU. This'd be moderately unusual... Shimgray 12:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Regarding PG, I'm fully aware they're part of the student association here at Edinburgh. Our lovely PG convener on the Student Representative Council will probably rip my head off if I say they're not ;-) The various number floating about all includes PG & UG (FT & PT in both cases). While I'm fully aware of the difficulties with having an exact figure, I was trying to make the point that I'm surpise we don't even seems to be able to relativly easily find some approximate figure.

As to the possiblities of weird mapping between EUSA membership to actual student numbers, those NUS Referendum Electorate already ignores Life/Associate members, as we erm, famously admitted this year don't actually know how many of our life/associate members are still alive. -- KTC 16:32, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I misread there. (You'd be surprised how often they don't include PG, though). And if it's any consolation, we not only didn't know if they're still alive, we didn't even know who they were... Shimgray 16:57, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

The 2006 prospectus says "More than 22,000 students study here".

I just found this factsheet from Jan 2005 - it says a total of 23,111 students, of which 5,738 are postgrads. Also staff factsheet says total of 7,118 staff, of which 2,756 are Academic (whatever they mean by that?). Vclaw 14:56, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

So saying here, c. 23,000 isn't that far off. Cool! About the staff numbers, some of which are Academic, that I'd persume counts the lecturers, readers, professor etc. Seeing how this number is the 04-05 one instead of the 00-01 one previously refered to, I'll update the infobox slightly to reflect the staff & PG number. -- KTC 16:32, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Yep, academic staff is teaching and research staff. Other categories are technical and secretarial. I suppose the medical staff at Little France would also count in the total but not as academic.195.128.251.199 22:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

For a number of other UK universities I've been using the most recent publicly available HESA statistic for student numbers (and the UG-PG-other breakdown) as and when editing. For Edinburgh the figures are 23,125 total, 75 FE students (there's now an option for "other students" on the infobox), 6,340 PGs and 16710 UGs. I'm inclined to put these figures in - having a common set across universities makes it easier to compare and the HESA return is applying a common method of counting. Timrollpickering 01:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alumnus: Augustus de Morgan?

Is de Morgan really an alumnus of Edinburgh? I can't find any info to suggest that he is.

[edit] Latin orthography

Are we sure it isn't Academia Edimburgensis, with an "m"? Doops | talk 19:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] JK Rowling

I had been wondering whether she should be in the list or not. She did attend Moray House for a PGCE in 1996, but Moray House was not part of the University of Edinburgh at that point, it was still an independent institution. [2]. Should she be listed or not? Maccoinnich 11:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've now added a mention of her study at Moray House to the J. K. Rowling article, which should help avoid confusion. I think she should be listed, but with a note saying that Moray House was not part of the University at the time. Vclaw 15:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year: Edinburgh or Dundee?

I am a bit confused by The Sunday Times' own information on their Scottish University of the Year 2005: In one place they say it is Dundee, in another it is Edinburgh. Can anyone clarify? Tobi Kellner

Yes I think Dundee was in the academic year 2004/5 and in 2005 Edinburgh became the Scottish University of the year for academic year 2005/6. It's a bit like football league champions going over the calendar year.

[edit] Ancient universities of Scotland

Why has the infobox for the ancient universities of Scotland been deleted? Benson85 20:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

According to deletion log -> WP:TFD#Template:UC_taxobox -- KTC 23:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colleges and Schools

Now I know my reordering of the Schools isn't actually alphabetical. I'm just following the order presented on the university's own website - http://www.ed.ac.uk/misc/academic.html. It's not my fault if whoever did that doesn't know their alphabet. ;-) -- KTC 12:03, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prominent students (current)

Isn't this section just asking for trouble with vanity edits? I get the point of adding two members of "royalty", but there's now an "entrepeneur" without even a WP article attached. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 11:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

nuke it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

If it helps, I'm currently studying at the University. Shall I get a few photos? Adam Cuerden ^talk 20:43, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Go for it. If you're prepared to license your work appropriately, then photos illustrating the architecture, atmosphere, historical features, etc. are all helpful. Even if they don't last in the article, if you upload them to the Wikimedia Commons (not just to Wikipedia) and put them into categories, they'll be likely to prove useful at some point. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 21:40, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Photo's of "Pollock Halls" need to be removed. The pictured building is now a hotel / conference centre. The Pollock halls student accommodation complex now comprises of only the much larger, modern structures to the south of this building. 82.45.61.117 21:26, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] University ratings

(I'm posting this to all articles on UK universities as so far discussion hasn't really taken off on Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities.)

There needs to be a broader convention about which university rankings to include in articles. Currently it seems most pages are listing primarily those that show the institution at its best (or worst in a few cases). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities#University ratings. Timrollpickering 22:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)