We have too many universities

Communities United Kingdom
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This is a brief post to share my thoughts about university mapping in the UK after consolidating 100+ amenity=university in Wales into just 12. In Cardiff alone there were 56 examples of amenity=university, that number now correctly stands at 4. To view all universities now mapped in Wales, use this Overpass query.

The current problem
The main problem is that many university campuses (and faculties) are tagged amenity=university when only the parent university should carry this tag. There are many downsides to this practice, namely inflating the count of universities, making it hard to understand the extent of universities, and erasing any difference between campus and university. The reason for this practice is obvious - tagging for the renderer. Mappers want campus names to render, as they are individually significant locations, and can often be tens of miles away from other parts of the university. By correcting a number of campuses I have caused their names to disappear from carto and other maps - I couldn’t see any replacement, legitimate tag that could be applied that would render. I feel like this is a necessary tradeoff to represent reality correctly. Of course, if all campuses were tagged in the same way, it would be possible to reintroduce rendering for this new tag.

What tags have I used?
I am using Swansea University as an example
Each university multipolygon is tagged in the following way:

Each campus is tagged in the following way:

Some campuses may themselves need to be multipolygons. As the amenity=university is a multipolygon, it would not be correct to add a campus multipolygon as a member of the university multipolygon.

Other ancillary parts of the university have not been tagged education=campus, and may be untagged outer ways, with other features mapped within, e.g. Way: â€ȘUniversity Playing Fields‬ (â€Ș15091278‬) | OpenStreetMap or Way: 1522933960 | OpenStreetMap

I made sure to leave a couple of changeset comments for some users that have been editing university relations to let them know of my tagging changes.

Why did I select these tags?
Mainly, why have I used education=campus? I felt it was important to have a top-level tag to represent named campus areas, as they are important for wayfinding and are clearly distinct, mappable features. I ATYL education=campus in the abscence of any other specific tag existing. I also added campus= which is documented and should carry only the unique part of the full campus name, e.g. ‘Singleton Park’. (Key:campus - OpenStreetMap Wiki)

What’s the wider issue in the UK?
Depending what data source you look at, there are between 160-310 universities in the UK. As per taginfo, there are 1,100 examples of amenity=university. If the rest of the UK is anything like Wales, that means there will be hundreds of examples of campuses and faculties tagged with amenity=university, nested university nodes and areas, and the names of entire universities unmapped because only their campuses are mapped.

Collegiate Universities Caveat
I haven’t looked too much into how many universities this may apply to, but Oxford University certainly is one. Where individual constituent colleges function independently from one another, having their own admissions process, staff, acommodation etc. they should be each treated as their own amenity=university.

Next Steps
I’m not planning to tackle any more universities any time soon, as it’s quite a time consuming and complex job to unpick the unique messes in each city. This post serves to inform others of some of the issues I’ve found, potential solutions, and to seek feedback if there are any better ways I could have represented some of these universities.

Thanks for reading,
~LGS

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Thank you for this work, and I’m thinking of parallels with schools where one school may have multiple sites.

With the tagging you’ve done, there is no tag on the campus itself that denotes it as being a university level campus, one would have to check the parent multipolygon relation for that information. I’m not sure how best that could be incorporated though.

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Fundamentally, you already have a problem with defining =university as the organization, which is better discussed internationally. I believe the documentation is more about non-adjacent buildings close to each other considered as one campus.

  • “separate campuses (that are individually mapped as ways or relations) if they have separate students, courses and faculty” is conflicting with the common definition of “campus”
  • There’s already conflicting advice from the terminology of " Correct: Map a university campus as a multipolygon relation with a single amenity=university tag." focusing on a campus, not the whole “university”. Tag:amenity=university - OpenStreetMap Wiki

Historically, it was voted with specific wording Proposal:University Campus (tertiary education) - OpenStreetMap Wiki

It was reorganized in 2024, which has become significantly different in between after 2020

  • Tag:amenity=university: Difference between revisions - OpenStreetMap Wiki
  • " Use amenity=university on each separate area of a university, used commonly when there are multiple named campuses, use operator=* to indicate the university name. This is incorrect if each campus is not[3] a separate university[4], but there is not yet a good alternative as there is no tag for a university campus." Tag:amenity=university: Difference between revisions - OpenStreetMap Wiki
    • The “incorrect” judgement is unexplained
    • It seems this is the best use of =university
    • “there is no tag for a university campus” isn’t true from its origins
    • I believe some users expanded the use of =unversity for the whole organization, then others claim this is the only one correct use

In 2011, it was still stated as the campus " But there may be areas which are part of the same university but forming their own outlying campus or individual building. These will probably need to be mapped as another instance of the same tags (amenity=university and name=*)" Tag:amenity=university: Difference between revisions - OpenStreetMap Wiki

Maybe there was an over-correction from wrongly adding amenity=university to every building= , towards using amenity=university for the whole organization?

No other education= nor amenity= institutions are defined as the organization. It causes complications and paradoxes with satellite campuses in other provinces and countries. =university may also not be suitable on other university-used facilities.
I have already commented on campus= names blocking it from being used for campus types =main vs =satellite
I favor one US method of re-using brand= + branch=
Besides, note problems with faculty= and department= inherently, and together with campus=

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UK universities have [too] many primary records mainly because of split campuses, affiliated sites, and buildings spread across wide areas. Personally I loathe all-encompassing super-relations and I hope that this is not the solution. Whilst it is technically correct, it leads to relations spanning entire cities and beyond.

The other reason is that a number of universities use OSM as a datasource for campus maps (yay!) and nobody wants to mess that up for them. Tread carefully.

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I don’t like super-relations either but the second reason here is essentially tagging for the renderer. The Temple of Peace is not an amenity=university.

I know Cardiff was looking into opening a satellite campus in Kazakhstan (not sure if they are now), and I do agree that it would be silly to add it to a relation along with the main sites in Wales. Maybe there is another solution out there for cases like this?

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Perhaps if we view universities as educational business with branches in different towns, we have a workable analogy. Then link them all by brand and wikidata just like any other brand. Would work for branches in other countries.

We don’t do complex polygons for other educational businesses do we?

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I would say that the use of amenity=university to tag campuses rather than the institution as a whole is pretty widespread in the UK, to the point where even if it’s incorrect from a technical point of view, it would need discussion and consensus before any wholesale changes are made.

In particular, without suitable alternative tagging (and time for systems to adapt to it), many data users and renderers may unexpectedly end up with sub-optimal outputs. This will reflect badly on OSM.

FWIW, I’m not completely convinced that it is wrong to tag individual campuses with amenity=university. If you think of the tag as being an attribute of the site, then since the site is providing university-level education, it could have that description. In a similar (though perhaps less obvious way) I would assume we will typically tag each site of a multi-site school with amenity=school.

For documented details of what was worked out for the University of Cambridge (who use and help maintain OSM data for their official map) see University of Cambridge - OpenStreetMap Wiki .

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