Talk:Shimer Great Books School

message: Another editor has begun an edit war to ensure this article includes the sentence "In 2014, the Washington Monthly ranked Shimer as the worst college in America, based on a combination of graduation rate, student debt, and percentage of minority and low-income students."  He or she included a reference from the magazine and an article from The Guardian that (erroneously) refers to the Washington Monthly article.
As I stated when I initially reverted the first edit that inserted this material into the article, it's a distortion of the article to simply say that it ranked this college the "worst college in America" without providing any additional context or information.  The article was a thought exercise exploring the complexity of creating college rankings in the context of a new effort by the federal government to create a new set of college rankings, not an actual attempt at ranking colleges.  To that end, the author went through a series of experiments where he used different criteria and weights to create four different lists; Shimer College was included in two of them and was only ranked number one in one of those lists.  So it's incredibly misleading and dishonest to simply tell readers that Washington Monthly ranked this college as the worst in the country based on an article that (a) wasn't really about create rankings for use but about demonstrating the challenges inherent in create ranking systems and (b) didn't conclusively rank any college or university. ElKevbo (talk) 07:11, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Washington Monthly Ranking of "Worst College" 

message: I notice that  changed the tense in the article to indicate the school is still open but these changes were reverted by  because they weren't sourced. I found two articles, one that talks about how the school is being acquired by North Central college and another in the Chicago Reader confirming that the acquisition has happened and the school is still in existence. So IMO, the edits are now justified. I think a few more minor changes originally made would need to be redone (or just revert back to the version by Know4Free and include my two references) but before I did any more work wanted to post this to make sure I'm not misunderstanding anything and that we have a consensus. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:58, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess the issue is that the college is no longer an independent entity, now it's been absorbed into another school. But I see the point of the people at the school: the teachers, the way they do things, still lives on and we're doing a dis-service to users if we give the impression that the place has just stopped existing. For example, the Haas_School_of_Business is part of Berkeley but it still has an article of it's own, I think the same should be reasonable here, even if we have to change the name of the article from Shimer College to whatever it's called now. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:14, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: If someone wants to move this article and update it so that it's clear to readers that this college has been absorbed by another institution and is now one program (among many) at that institution then that would be fine.  But it's not acceptable to edit this article so that it says or implies that Shimer College as a standalone entity still exists and is continuing to operate as it has operated until recently. ElKevbo (talk) 01:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The Reader article says "The Great Books institution makes a move to North Central College" i.e., the institution still exists. It also says that most of the students and faculty have made the move. So it's the same institution. Before this latest move it was already part of IIT and it was still called Shimer College in the article and it said it was open. I see no difference between that case and the current case except it's moved from IIT to North Central College. Can you explain how moving to IIT meant the college was still described in the present tense but moving to North Central College means it's now being described in the past tense? --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:13, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: As I gave this some more thought and looked at the references (as well as the web site for Shimer) I realize you are correct. I think the article could be changed so that it's renamed to "Shimer Great books program" or whatever the proper name for the new group within North Central is and then at that point the tenses could be changed but until someone does that it gives the wrong message to say that Shimer College itself is still open. I left a message on the talk page of the person who made the original change offering to help them make that kind of change but haven't heard back from them yet.  --MadScientistX11 (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  School still Open? 

message: This Featured Article is in need of an update in order to comply with FA criteria.
Problems:
* Notable alumni subsection is mostly unsourced;
* From what I gather, this College was acquired by another college in 2017. While the article was put in the past tense to reflect this, there's no mention of how this process went down (the History section makes no mention of it) or why. Lack of funds? I have no idea, and the article does not tell me;
* Several small sentences were added throughout the text to reflect the acquisition, but they are all unsourced:
:* "In 2017, seven Shimer faculty joined the Shimer School of Great Books at North Central College."
:* "As of 2017, tuition and fees for the Shimer School will be identical to those of North Central College."
:* "As of June 1, 2017, the Shimer School of Great Books of North Central College is located on the campus of North Central in Naperville, Illinois."
:* "This inclusive model of governance was unique in American higher education."
:* "...  led the College to its new future at North Central College and was awarded an honorary doctorate in April 2017 in recognition of her service."
:* "As students at North Central, Shimerians will have access to the full range of student services and student organizations."
:* "Whether these programs will continue at North Central is unknown."
:* "This program will continue at North Central."
It's very curious how this article reads as if the college is stuck in time. Needs an update to make its current status more obvious. RetiredDuke (talk) 16:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Should the article perhaps be brought up on FAR? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:51, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Editors are limited to one FAR per week; if you register an account, you could pitch in. SandyGeorgia (Talk)  06:20, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

text: Well, like Sandy said above, I'm limited in my capacity to open new nominations (1 per week). On top of that, I wasn't planning on opening new noms during the festivities. But the article can be submitted to FAR, yes, and will probably be, sooner or later, if the issues above aren't fixed in the mean time. RetiredDuke (talk) 14:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: User:207.161.86.162, at FAR now. RetiredDuke (talk) 21:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  FA in need of review