Talk:University of Manchester

Dispute resolution

Please stop the edit war, let's solve it here @Urselius: and @Woodopal:. As it stands I am inclined to agree with Urselius, Woodopal please state your case as to why we should change the article the way you want. EvilxFish (talk) 09:04, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's a list of universities that were founded by mergers: University of Wales Trinity Saint David, University College London, Royal Holloway, University of London, City, University of London, University of South Wales and Ulster University. This is just short list, I'm certain there are many more examples but you will note that there has not been additional clarification in any of the aforementioned pages, Manchester should not be an exception, it's not consistent. The fact that the dates of establishment dates are in the past are enough of an indication that they are predecessor institution.

I would firstly like to say that User:Aloneinthewild also reverted the same edit, therefore I am not alone in my opinion. The merger that created UoM is very recent, dating to 2004, which is a distinction. The merger was also of two institutions each with a long history, the predecessor institutions of UoM, therefore, do not form a linear list, but a binary one. UoM explicitly claims 1824 as the date of its establishment (incorporated into its logo), this being the formation date of the earliest forerunner of UMIST, therefore the predecessors of the university are considered important to the modern institution. The relationship between VUM and UMIST was complex, from 1966 to c. 1993 UMIST was for most purposes an independent university, but at the same time it constituted the Faculty of Technology of VUM. The easiest and most succinct way to flag all of these unusual aspects of the history of UoM in the infobox is to have some sort of heading flagging the predecesor institutions, as is the case now. A more precise approach within the infobox could be to overtly state that the 2004 foundation was formed by the merger of UMIST and VUM, then to list the predecessors of UMIST and the predecessors of VUM separately; but I think the result would be an enormously extended infobox, which might be objectionable itself. Urselius (talk) 07:40, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed I did revert first. I believe it needs to be clear that Manchester was the combination of two former universities (as in the lead sentence). It doesn't directly follow from institutions that it succeeded, compared to UCL, City. Maybe this needs to be clearer. I think it was in a previous version of the article. Aloneinthewild (talk) 11:52, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Maybe something like the old version of the article would be better :

2004 - Manchester University (predecessors UMIST est. 1824; Victoria University of Manchester est. 1851) Aloneinthewild (talk) 12:02, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I suspect that this approach would attract editors who would raise the objection that Owens College and the Manchester Mechanics Institute were not, respectively, the same institutions as VUM and UMIST. Urselius (talk) 12:40, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

You're probably correct there. How about something that summarises Manchester was founded in 2004 by the merger of UMIST and Victoria University (and leave out the dates since their history is best explained in an article. Aloneinthewild (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Possibly avoiding the word 'established' would be useful, there is no doubt that VUM has a continuous organisational history (with changes of name and status) back to 1851, and UMIST to 1824. Perhaps wording such as "University of Manchester established 2004 - Resulting from the merger of Victoria University of Manchester, with origins in 1841, and UMIST, with origins in 1824"? Urselius (talk) 20:00, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Using both "established" and "previous names" in the infobox may make the distinction clearer. Woodopal (talk) 21:18, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose to merge Victoria University of Manchester into University of Manchester. I think that the content in the Victoria University of Manchester article can easily be explained in the context of University of Manchester, and the University of Manchester article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Victoria University of Manchester will not cause any problems as far as article size is concerned. Additionally, most of the University of Manchester's well-known alumni attended the university when it was known as VUM. Northern Hills (talk) 11:04, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Strongly oppose - VUM is a different entity from the present university, as different as VUM was from its predecessor, the Victoria University. In 2004 both VUM and UMIST were formally dissolved and the present university was created with its own Royal Charter. To be logically consistent, for VUM to be merged into this article the UMIST article would also have to be merged and the end result would be illogical and confusing for the reader. Urselius (talk) 11:46, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Strongly oppose - UoM was formed by the merger of UMIST and VUM as above. List of University of Manchester people is already a merged list for UMIST, VUM and UoM, and that was your main point.Billlion (talk) 22:09, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Oppose While the current University of Manchester is the successor institution to VUM it is, as others have said, a different entity and is also the successor to UMIST. There seems little to recommend merging the articles and much against it. Robminchin (talk) 05:09, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

staff numbers

From the university's own current pdf [1] its staff numbers are:

Total: 12,800

Academic: 4,710

Research: 2,030

Administrative: 1,650

Clerical: 2,160

IT: 470

Manual/craft: 780

Nursing/medically allied: 30

Technical/experimental officers: 1,050 Urselius (talk) 13:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

For cross-comparability with other articles, it might be better to use the staff numbers Manchester puts on its returns to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which are supplied by all UK universities using a standard definition.[2] This gives 5,120 academic staff as of 2017/18 (broken down as 2650 permanent/open-ended and 2470 fixed-term[3]). Manchester also reports 5,580 non-academic staff (of which 1,710 are administrative/secretarial), for a total of 10,700. Manchester also has 3,415 academics on atypical contracts ("whose contracts involve working arrangements that are not permanent, involve complex employment relationships and/or involve work away from the supervision of the normal work provider") in addition to this, the most of any British university. Robminchin (talk) 20:30, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I added the above because there is a fault in the infobox. From my experience if you add a number when editing the infobox to "| staff" the resulting number on the actual page is flagged as "Administrative staff". This seems to be automatic. Therefore, on a number of pages people have added the total staff numbers only for it to appear as "Administrative staff". An unregistered editor was adding the total numbers to the infobox of this page and it coming up as "administrative staff". When I reverted this to just showing the academic staff numbers he or she was re-reverting. Better to have no number than a false one. Urselius (talk) 10:49, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose to merge University of Manchester protests (2020–2021) into University of Manchester. Content in article could very easily be condensed into a paragraph of a few sentences, another case of WP:RECENTISM. SɱαɾƚყPαɳƚʂ22 (Ⓣⓐⓛⓚ) 18:47, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose, the merger is not needed. The protests are of sufficient interest in themselves to merit a small article. The protests should be given a mention and be linked on the university's main page, however. Urselius (talk) 19:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose, In agreement with Urselius. - Hatchens (talk) 09:34, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose, same as the two comments above. --Bangalamania (talk) 12:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)