Talk:Hult International Business School

Connected Contributors

2011 Feb advert tag

Most of this article looks like it has been copied and pasted from promos for the company.

The text matches what appears in their website and in the economist and ft very closely.

I don't think any one can legitimately suggest that rubbish like -

"amphitheatre-style classrooms, a fully equipped computer centre, video-conferencing spaces, student break-out rooms, gym facilities, a restaurant, bar and lounges"

"Hult International Business School organizes the prestigious Hult Global Case Challenge"

and

"its innovative curriculum has been forged by the demands of employers and realities of business"

is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia.

So what to do? Is deletion of the offending content the best approach until someone writes a better article.

Just noticed that there has been a history of advertising on this article. Clearwaterbehind (talk) 18:00, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there has been a history of advertising in the article. There also has been a history of other contributors removing the advertising, adding third-party sourced content, and/or reverting the article to earlier states that did not have the kinds of problems you have identified. Constructive contributors are always welcome. ;-) --Orlady (talk) 21:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I had noticed the preceding discussions and was hesitant to just chop all the blocks of what I would call advertising. Buy even within the relevant information of the history there are statements like "Its Shanghai campus opened (Elective Term only)" -- I draw attention to Elective Term only. That sounds like it came from a press release.

Should there be whole section on the various courses offered, that seems rather much, it even refers(without context) to modules in those courses - "Graduate students study Module A&B"

Since I don't seem to be in a minority opinion about this, I'll do a little cleaning up. If anyone is unhappy, lets discuss. Not planning a war :) Clearwaterbehind (talk) 04:57, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The extensive reverting in the article is starting to take on the dimensions of a war. If the reverting continues, I plan to protect the article for a little while. --Orlady (talk) 15:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Which parts of the article are still advertising-like? Would it be possible to move the advertising alert to a specific section to indicate better what still needs to be removed/changed after the recent edits? Bthor (talk) 21:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Anyone else think the section "Hult Global Case Challenge" is a little off topic?Clearwaterbehind (talk) 05:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. It's an activity of this educational institution. There had been a separate article about the "Case Challenge." It possibly could be treated as an independently notable topic, but considering how closely it is associated with Hult and how little other encyclopedic content there is in this article, I didn't see any reason for splitting it off. Accordingly, I merged the content of the other article into this one, in place of the section that had been here (which was essentially just a Hult PR piece without much hint of independent content). --Orlady (talk) 15:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the article is reaching a stage where we could remove the advert tag. But all this editing has been done over a couple of days during a holiday weekend in the US. Are there rules/customs about leaving the tag there to give time for other contributors? Clearwaterbehind (talk) 22:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

How about adding http://hultglobalcasechallenge.com/ to the External Links section? Bthor (talk) 16:27, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd agree - most of the objectionable advertising content has been removed/edited. If there's any other objectionable material, it should be raised or the advert tag should be, at least for now, removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ehfeng (talk • contribs) 09:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The advert tag is still in place. Which areas of the article still read like advertising? I would be glad to try rewriting some of them. k8bell —Preceding undated comment added 11:04, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Rankings

As the article has been criticized as biased and containing advertising-like sections, I just added the complete rankings data from The Economist 2010 and Financial Times 2011 rankings. I am aware that this takes up space and makes the article maybe longer than needed, however I feel that only by providing the full ranking information, we can finally end the discussion on the importance of the school and if it is being portrayed too positively or too negatively. Furthermore, backing up the full ranking data here should avoid such discussion in the future. I will try to find the detailed ranking data for previous years to complete the table. Bthor (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The addition of a huge and detailed table about rankings impresses me as excessive emphasis on rankings. IMO, the rankings should be taken out of the lead section and presented in text form in a section of the article text, but not tabulated in this form -- because it makes them far more prominent than rankings (good or bad or indifferent) deserve to be. --Orlady (talk) 00:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the table puts a major visual emphasis on the rankings and that it therefore might be too much of a focus (when I started the table I didn't realize it would be that large). What would be the best way to consolidate all the ranking content into text without omitting any of the data? How about we move the table here into the Talk page?Bthor (talk) 03:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Reference that suggests, that a large table for references is reasonable for a business school: London School of Economics. Bthor (talk) 03:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Not a good comparison. That London School of Economics article is many times longer than the Hult article (also, unlike this article, it is extensively sourced to independent reliable sources), and the tables of rankings cover many more different ranking lists but take up much less space than the table drafted for this article. The LSE article includes only the school's overall rank on 17 different ranking lists, whereas the Hult table covers only two different lists, but provides the school's scores (or ranks) for each of the individual criteria that were scored in developing those two lists. IMO, the only ranks in the Hult article that are encyclopedic are the Economist ranking for 2010 and the three Financial Times rankings for 2009. 2010, and 2011. Accordingly, all subscores should be removed from the article. --Orlady (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I am in two minds over this one. The overall score is useful (insofar as anything like this can be scored) and the reader can then decide to get the details for themselves. On the other hand, the inclusion of the breakdown gives a rounded picture of why the school is ranked where it is - looks like high scores due the diversity of the student body and boost in salary after finding work(presumably in the USA) and mid and low scores in other areas. In some way, the inclusion of the high and low scores in the opening section give a very balanced overview. I think more discussion is needed.Clearwaterbehind (talk) 04:56, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Your comment (and, to some extent, the one below) suggests that you are thinking of this article as part of a guide to choosing business schools. That is not appropriate. Per policy, Wikipedia is not an advice guide. It is an encyclopedia, and the details of the scoring done by these publications are little more than trivia -- something else that does not belong in Wikipedia. --Orlady (talk) 15:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm warming to the idea of inclusion of the full table, I had made some edits based on numbers from 2010. When searching google for the FT mba rankings, the first page I found was for 2010 and I assumed that the 2011 rankings were not done yet. My apologies for the flurry of edits and corrections in the first section of the page.Clearwaterbehind (talk) 05:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I have fought some wars with Wiki code in the last hours and I believe I found a way to satisfy both opinions: The overall ranking data are in one table and then there is a second table that is collapsed by default that contains all the detailed data. I apologize for needing so many edits for that. I was trying to create one table with collapsible and non-collapsible rows (as in http://dev.wikia.com/wiki/ShowHide), but that code feature seems to be not available currently. I hope that the two tables satisfy all editors and readers of the article in terms of visual brevity and available level of detail. Bthor (talk) 20:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I would like to propose to undo today's edits by Ronaman as I would consider them vandalizing the Rankings section. Bthor (talk) 00:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Cambridge Location

I had corrected the location of the school to Cambridge, MA. I see that I has been changed to Boston. This is not accurate. As an encyclopedia we should report accurate data. Cambridge is a separate city to Boston, it is in a different county.

For now, I'll revert it to Cambridge, as per the address of the school on its own website. From their own site - 1 Education Street Cambridge, MA 02141 United States

I'm of the opinion that they can call the school whatever they want and wikipedia can note that the school calls itself the boston campus, but if we are listing the location we must use the verifiable address. For example, see Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. The name of the airport refers to the city of Frankfurt, but wikipedia gives the accurate location of the airport as "located 10 km (6.2 mi) from the town of Kirchberg and 20 km (12 mi) from the town of Simmern in the Rhein-Hunsrück district of Rhineland-Palatinate to the west of central Germany. Despite its name, the airport is virtually equidistant between Frankfurt and Luxembourg - about 120 km (75 mi) to each city (by road)."

If there is a section on each of campus, then giving the name as the Boston Campus is fine, since that's what they call it, as long as the correct address is also given.

Please discuss here if you have a reason to provide a different address.Clearwaterbehind (talk) 21:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I changed at least one instance that identified the location as "Cambridge, USA," which was totally unacceptable. I believe I changed that to "Boston area," which IMO is the most informative way to identify this location on a list of several world cities in the lead section of the article. I see that you have reverted that. IMO, the shorthand "Cambridge, MA (USA)" that currently appears in the lead is more like a postal address than a meaningful description for a lead section. --Orlady (talk) 21:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree. I checked a few other universities on wikipedia the first sentence for each is given below-

Harvard - "Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts"

MIT - "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts"

Tufts - "Tufts University is a private research university in Medford/Somerville"

If listing Cambridge, MA as the location of Harvard and MIT is appropriate, as other contributors agree then I think it should be appropriate for this school.

Additionally, if I understand the verifiability rules of wikipedia correctly, a location of Boston cannot be backuped by any source.Clearwaterbehind (talk) 22:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Those other universities each have a single location -- and note that the articles provide the full name of "Massachusetts" rather than the non-encyclopedia-like post-office abbreviation "MA". In contrast, Hult has five locations in several disparate parts of the world. In the lead sentence of the article, which has the purpose of providing key summary information that is presented in greater detail later in the article (see WP:Lead section), it is incongruous to describe four of the Hult locations broadly (e.g., as "London" and not as "Bloomsbury, London, England, UK") while providing a post-office-abbreviated detailed location for the fifth. The article does need to identify the Boston-area location as Cambridge, but it overburdens the lead sentence to attempt to stuff that detail into the very first sentence. For comparison, note that University of Phoenix does not even mention locations in the lead section and that State University of New York does not mention any specific cities in the lead sentence.
As for your comment on "verifiability", that's not an issue. It is well documented that Cambridge is part of the Boston area. It is not necessary to cite a source that specifically documents that Hult's Cambridge location is near Boston for the article to say that. --Orlady (talk) 23:10, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

When considering the list of locations, the main focus should be on the global distribution of the campuses. Fortunately or unfortunately there is a Cambridge in the US and one (that is probably more internationally known) in the UK. Therefore it should either be called Boston (the link could actually link to Cambridge, MA) or when it refers to Cambridge the full reference including MA (which again is something that international readers might not understand as an abbreviation for a state) and USA to distinguish it from the UK city. Bthor (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Nicely stated regarding "the global distribution of the campuses." However, that does not justify labeling the Cambridge campus as "Boston." The article may describe it as "near Boston" or "Boston area", but should not suggest that it is in Boston proper. Additionally, it is erroneous to suggest that the city of Cambridge can be called "Cambridge, USA." Cambridge (disambiguation) lists 16 places in the United States named Cambridge. (This is an example of why the state name is normally included when giving U.S. place names in contexts where the state name is not already apparent.) It needs to be identified as "Cambridge, Massachusetts." --Orlady (talk) 02:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

This does not seem the right approach, and POV should not override the fact that that school is, like Harvard and MIT, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this is a fact, there is no way around that. I see no editor suggesting that those schools are in the "Boston area". It was not my intention to give a post office address. As for London, that is a city, and Bloomsbury is just part of a city and I see no reason what that should be used. In the case of Cambridge, IT is a city, distinct from Boston, in a different county. Now, as to whether "Cambridge, MA (USA)" is good, I can see your point, but Cambridge, Massachusetts is correct and that is the change that should have been made.

I do not believe there is a consensus here so the name of the actual city the school is located in should be used while the discussion continues. And if we are to draw on Harvard and MIT as examples, the consensus is that "Boston area" is not and should not be used. From what I can see, this is now the only university located in Cambridge that is not listed as Cambridge.

Regarding the University of Phoenix and NY State, the openings of their articles are not providing any inaccurate approximations of location.

Now as a compromise, we could say something like Cambridge, Massachusetts (near Boston), but I personally don't like it. I will await some responses before editing. Clearwaterbehind (talk) 07:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I think this discussion is in danger of getting away from the facts. The matter in question is -

1. what is the location of the Massachusetts branch of the university and

2. how are the locations of universitis given on wikipedia.

My answers -

1. the university is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2. where given, the location of the university is accurate to the city the school is in - e.g. MIT, Harvard, Tufts, American School in Japan, Central European University, University of Amsterdam,University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and from what I can see all the others that give a location.Clearwaterbehind (talk) 07:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

This discussion is making a mountain out of a molehill. But you speak of "facts," and one fact to consider is that the city of Boston is a mere molehill geographically compared with the other places named in the lead section of the article. Here are the geographic areas (from the Wikipedia articles) of the four other places where Hult claims locations:

• Shanghai - 6,218 km2 (2,401 sq mi)
• Dubai - 4,114 km2 (1,588.4 sq mi)
• London - 607 sq mi (1,572.1 km2)
• San Francisco - 231.92 sq mi (600.7 km2)

For comparison, the city of Boston is only 89.63 sq mi (232.14 km2). For the lead sentence of the article, which I think is the only part of the article that you are complaining about here, "Boston area" provides at least as good an indication of the location as any of those other place names -- and arguably locates its facility more precisely than "Shanghai", "Dubai", or "London" (and probably also "San Francisco"). That lead sentence, consistent with Wikipedia guidance on article lead sections defines the topic without being overly specific. Note that the lead section guidance illustrates some general guidance with an example that is close to the facts of this situation:

The subject should be placed in a context with which many readers could be expected to be familiar. For example, rather than giving the latitude and longitude of a town, it is better to state that it is the suburb of some city, or perhaps that it provides services for the farm country of xyz county. Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it.

In the body of the article, I believe it is very clear that Hult is in the city of Cambridge, not within Boston's city limits. Interestingly, no Hult location in any other city is described with anything near that specificity anywhere in the article. --Orlady (talk) 14:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

---

So that the question in hand is not lost a discussion geographical areas I will re-state it for other contributors -

1. what is the location of the Massachusetts branch of the university?

2. how are the locations of universitis given on wikipedia?

My answers -

1. the university is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2. where given, the location of the university is accurate to the city the school is in - e.g. MIT, Harvard, Tufts, American School in Japan, Central European University, University of Amsterdam,University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and from what I can see all the others that give a location

The location given on the "contact us" page of the school - 1 Education Street, Cambridge, MA 02141, United States

I hope to hear from new contributors. Clearwaterbehind (talk) 17:15, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Update tag for Programs and location section (March 2011)

This section needs to be updated. While the overall list of locations is correct, some programs are listed for locations where they are not offered. Also, one program - the Master of Social Entrepreneurship - has not been launched yet (expected incoming class of fall 2011). Bthor (talk) 14:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

On the Hult website it seems that there are now 7 locations under "campuses". The homepage still says 5. I can revisit the Programs and Location section, but which is appropriate to include? Does this section require such a level of detail about which programs are at each campus? It seems that this makes accuracy difficult to maintain. k8bell (k8bell 12:11, 02 November 2012 (CET) Plug This entry (July 2013)looks and reads like a self-placed marketing plug by an educational products commercial vendor. No place in an encyclopedia.87.114.120.22 (talk) 23:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

COI and advert tags

I just went through the history of the article and listed all the obvious paid editors, as well as accounts likely to be connected as they are SPA. As several folks have noted above, this reads like an ad in many ways.

I've added a conflict of interest and advert tag to this article. This signifies to readers that the article has been extensively edited by someone with a conflict of interest, and is likely to have bias, in the form of missing negative content, overemphasis on "positives", non-neutral language (all of which are violations of the WP:NPOV content policy), and is likely to have unsourced or poorly sourced content, in violation of the WP:VERIFY content policy. It is likely that the content promotes the subject of the article, in violation of the WP:PROMO policy. Independent editors need to review the article and correct it, and then may remove the tag. If you do so, please leave a note here. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 05:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Request edit on 3 May 2018

Need more information regarding the business identification status of this university (for-profit/not-for-profit), and more information in general regarding what the university actually does. More information period!Achlys 23:08, 21 May 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samlloydcarlson (talk • contribs) 23:08, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

A search at the IRS website for the nonprofit status shows that 501(c)(5) was revoked in 2011. That should not be added. The search result doesn't save such that the link is useful for others, in any case. Jytdog (talk) 23:40, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 April 2019

In the article several rankings are mentioned. For example the article states that Hult is #19 in the global financial times ranking. However, this is wrong. 2018 they were first time in history part of the ranking and placed only on #73 (Financial Times EMBA Ranking for Hult: http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/hult-international-business-school/executive-mba-ranking-2018#executive-mba-ranking-2018). Similar mistakes are made with other ranking positions. 95.91.223.27 (talk) 18:07, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Rankings have been updated. Cheers, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 19:40, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

NPOV

Some of the article reads like advertisement/marketing spiel. Just looking at the extensive history of paid/biased editors on this page makes me think bias is likely.

• Second paragraph. "Hult is accredited by the three largest and most influential business school accreditation associations: (AACSB, AMBA, and EQUIS). Hult is the only American business school to be accredited in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union." I have no background in this, so perhaps this is objectively true, but it reads like an ad
• Third paragraph. "The school is patron to the Hult Prize, the world's largest student competition for social good," Might be objectively true, although one of the sources cited is from Hult's website
• British background section. "under the academic advisory of Arthur Bryant, famed English economic historian"
• Academics. "Hult holds the prestigious Triple Crown accreditation... Only 1 percent of all business schools have this status. Hult is the only American business school to hold triple accreditation." Kinda seems like they're making an argument there...

Anyways, could be totally off target, but when I stumbled onto this page it just seemed a little fishy. Carla.Abra (talk) 15:46, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

All the above "peacock" comments have now been removed. Dormskirk (talk) 11:24, 29 December 2022 (UTC)