… makes such an enormous salary.
It’s a tough job, presiding over a university’s decline, but someone’s got to do it.
… makes such an enormous salary.
It’s a tough job, presiding over a university’s decline, but someone’s got to do it.
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:30PM
The U has the nicest students in the world. Period.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:49PM
What’s stunning is that the op-ed doesn’t mention any of the really ruinous behavior, just some meaningless-ish results. He’ presided over two strikes, a squandering of capital, and a deterioration of relations between the administration and graduate students, who have become bitter and even openly hostile toward them. Bruinicks dismantled the General College, which had served Minnesotans superbly for decades, because it attracted students from traditionally disadvantaged educational backgrounds, which was hardly in keeping with his vision of the THIRD BEST PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA. And while it’s shameful to hear a university president engineer an entire university strategy predicated on a completely deranged view of what a university is, if you’re going to make your arbitrary ranking the measure of your quality as an institution, you gotta pay the choir.
Or as they say over in Medieval Studies, live by the sword, die by the sword.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:26PM
LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP
May 2006 state legislature approves $137 million in bonds for new football stadium with President of U of M as Chief Cheerleader
May 2006 President and Regents pledge to raise $150 million for new stadium (bringing the total cost, with interest on state bonds, to $330 million for a facility that will be used for six games each year)
May 2006 state legislature slashes University request for bonds to maintain and to renovate existing academic facilities from $80 million to $30 million
May 2008 state legislature again slashes University request for bonds to maintain and to renovate existing academic facilities from $100 million to $35 million
January 2009 governor’s proposed budget cuts $185 million from the University budget for operating expenses
February 2009 President decides to cut costs by terminating Graduate School and shifting all its functions to the individual colleges (a decision made in secret and without following the administrative policies of the University)
February 2009 Chair of the Board of Regents declares that the Regents have no authority regarding termination of Graduate School (Article II of the Bylaws of the Board vests the authority to govern the University in the Regents.)
February 2009 virtually all of the existing and retired Regents Professors sign petition asking for reconsideration of decision on Graduate School
February 2009 President politely tells Regents Professors to go fly a kite
September 2009 new football stadium opens; academic infrastructure continues to crumble
Michael W. McNabb
University of Minnesota B.A. 1971; J.D. 1974
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:36PM
The enormous salary link is to an outstanding piece by a U of M grad. Just as a reminder, OurCEO’s compensation this year is: $733,421.
current quagmire at the U of M. Improving our abysmal graduation rate is crucial. And OurCEO’s feeble claims that they are, indeed, improving is not helpful unless he acknowledges that our baseline – less than 30% – is pitiful.
Would you rather send your kids to Wisconsin, where the graduation rate is 80%, or Penn State where it is 85%, or the U where it is 61%? These are the latest numbers from Kiplinger. Incidentally, the average undergraduate debt – when students do graduate – is $25K at the U and at Wisconsin, $21K. That $25K number is an average; many of my students graduate with a debt load in the neighborhood of $35K. This influences career choices because some of them are recent immigrants with a low tolerance for debt.
What IS going on here?
We have a train wreck on our hands and it is about time to do something about it. "Ambitious aspirations to be one of the top three research universities in the world [sic]" is an inappropriate goal given the fact that we are a land grant institution whose first priority should be to educate Minnesota citizens at an affordable cost.
Bill Gleason, University of Minnesota graduate and faculty member
March 1st, 2012 at 12:40PM
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