WYE Policies & Disclaimers

Public policy summary

The following summarises key policy points; formal policy texts will be published item by item once confirmed and will govern.

Fairness & conflicts of interest

WYE reviews work and applications against published criteria. Reviewers, mentors, staff, or partners with relationships that could affect judgment must disclose them and recuse where necessary. Anonymous, independent, or multi-reviewer review applies where appropriate.

Academic integrity

All essays, data, citations, code, authorship, and contribution statements must be truthful. Plagiarism, fabricated sources or data, invented work processes, concealed significant assistance, or submitting others’ work may lead to disqualification, revoked results, or retraction.

AI use

WYE treats AI neither as simply banned nor simply permitted. Each programme states acceptable uses and disclosure requirements. Students must retain genuine ownership of the question, argument, evidence, analysis, and final expression, and are responsible for all content.

Privacy & minors

Only the minimum information needed to run a programme is collected, with restricted access. Parental or guardian consent is obtained where applicable. Essays, videos, identity materials, and contact details carry defined retention periods, access scopes, and deletion procedures.

Process-explanation videos are used only for shortlist verification — never published, never used in promotion, and never scored on production values, except with separate explicit consent.

Accessibility & equal opportunity

WYE provides reasonable accommodations or safe alternatives for disability, technical limitations, safety, or serious privacy constraints. Students of different countries, schools, educational backgrounds, and languages receive fair opportunity to participate within applicable eligibility rules.

Corrections, appeals & retraction

WYE publicly states what may be appealed, how, by when, and within what scope of review. Academic judgment is not re-reviewed for mere dissatisfaction, but procedural errors, identity errors, material factual omissions, and integrity findings may be reviewed under the rules.

Published content with factual errors, authorship disputes, data problems, or integrity problems may be corrected, annotated, or retracted.

General disclaimer

Participation in WYE does not guarantee awards, publication, admission, scholarships, internships, or employment. All programmes and opportunities are subject to eligibility, selection, funding, supervisory capacity, and actual availability.

WYE confers no formal degrees, university credit, or professional qualifications, and provides no immigration legal advice.

IMAGE SOURCES & USAGE STATEMENT

Where the campus photos on this site come from

The campus and building photographs used on this site are drawn from Unsplash’s licensed library, used for non-commercial and commercial display under its license, with photographers credited by convention. Photographs are always shown in black and white, used as layout imagery.

These are generic campus images. WYE has no affiliation, partnership, accreditation, or endorsement relationship with any university, college, or institution shown in a photograph, and no photograph implies that institution’s participation in any WYE programme.

Photographer
Used on
Vadim Sherbakov
Homepage
Vincent Y. USA
Homepage
Tyler Nanoff, Tyler Zhang
About WYE
Saira
Essay Prize overview
Nicole Plunkett, Brandee Taylor
Level 1 page
Ian Mackey
Research Pathways
Getty Images (via Unsplash)
School Chapters
Brandee Taylor, Sheng L
Award Verification
Joss Broward
Competition comparison
Steven Cordes
Annual calendar

If you hold rights to a photograph and believe its use here does not comply with its licence, write to support@worldyoungeconomist.org; we will remove or replace it promptly after review.