Talk:Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University

Not a university

Boosters of this institute keep removing the following facts:

• The DHBW currently doesn't have the right to confer Master's degrees. (That may change in the near future.)
• It doesn't have a PhD program.
• Their claim to research is based on a very short list of mostly non-scientific publications. Without a credible independent source calling this "research" this is not convincing.
• A school is commonly called a university only if it devotes significant resources to research and has a PhD program. Neither applies to the DHBW. It is, therefore, not a university.
• The German name does not include the term "university".

IMHO it is important to make these points in the article as the school misleadingly calls itself a university in English. If you have evidence to the contrary please discuss it here before removing information from the article again. Thanks, --EnOreg (talk) 17:29, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime they have started a limited master's program. It is just not quite clear whether it started in 2011 or 2012. The regulations were passed in 2011 but when did the first students enroll? Does anyone have a source to confirm the year? --EnOreg (talk) 12:46, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The first master's programmes startet in October 2011. Have a look at http://www.dhbw-ravensburg.de/de/masterprogramme-dhbw/ - Altpapier (talk) 13:31, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --EnOreg (talk) 14:37, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

The school, a public institution of the state of Baden-Württemberg, has a limited master's program, but no Ph.D. program. This is just like many state universities in the U.S., so the English title "Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University" seems alright and isn't misleading. The German word "Hochschule" (literally "high school") does not have an exact English counterpart; it refers to something between a college and a full research university, so "state university" is not that far off. AxelBoldt (talk) 11:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a U.S. school that has no research program, doesn't confer PhDs and still calls itself a university? The problem is, of course, that any institute can call itself a university, just like anyone can call themselves a genius---but that doesn't make it so.

The German term Hochschule is an umbrella term for all sorts of institutes of higher education. In English, college comes close. That does not make every Hochschule a university. Again, only Hochschulen with research and PhD programs are called Universität. That's why the DHBW does not have the term in its German name. --EnOreg (talk) 12:01, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

State universities in the U.S. often don't have doctoral programs (I teach at one). Some research is going on at these schools, but much less than at research universities; the emphasis is on teaching and on churning out bachelor's degrees. PhD programs are definitely not needed for the term "university". You claim that DHBW performs no research, but I haven't seen a reliable source on that, so I'm removing that claim; please reinstate if you can find supporting evidence. IMHO, the strongest argument against the label "university" for DHBW is that that they are not "universal" in the sense that they don't convey degrees in the standard core curriculum: humanities, math, science etc.; their degrees are all in applied fields. AxelBoldt (talk) 08:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Please don't just remove information from the article when that edit is clearly controversial and during an ongoing discussion of the matter. Such actions come across as aggressive and get in the way of a rational discussion.

You ask for evidence that DHBW doesn't do research. Alas, it is epistemologically impossible to prove that something does not exist. Is there a reliable third-party source that claims that they do serious research? Is there a significant number of scholarly publications from the school?

For the claim that the term university commonly implies research and PhDs I referred to the definition in the WP article. Is there a source to the contrary? Again, schools calling themselves a university doesn't count. How do you explain that, in German, DHBW doesn't even call itself a university? --EnOreg (talk) 12:12, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It's very possible to prove that the faculty of DHBW does not publish in scholarly journals: just do a search across literature databases, cross-checked against the faculty roster. (Of course, that would be original research, so you need to find a third party who has done such a search and reference the results.) Otherwise, you cannot make any claim one way or the other. Regarding your claim that universities by definition have Ph.D. programs, that is clearly false; many U.S. state universities don't, but I'm repeating myself. Lastly, I think the best course in the matter is to call the school an "institution of higher education" which is completely uncontroversial, then describe what it does, and let the reader decide whether this qualifies as a university or not. Everything else is original research. AxelBoldt (talk) 14:22, 17 July 2013 (UTC)