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
September 20th, 2009 at 6:51AM
The NCAA is a not-for-profit organization the same as George Washington University is. Do you really think the federal government could design a tax law that would someone get money out of the NCAA without having it apply to all private universities?
Also, a little nitpick. Separate dorms for athletes have been banned by the NCAA due to the athlete only dorm that used to exist at Oklahoma.
The real scandal, as was mentioned, is how little value an athlete scholarship really is worth. Majoring in general studies in Michigan and leaving school when your eligibility is up greatly increases the chance of future failures.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:32AM
superdestroyer: Here’s an abstract of an article by a specialist in tax law arguing that you can indeed do that, or at least begin accomplishing something very like that — and suggesting how:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336727#
September 20th, 2009 at 9:37PM
I prefer the term "not-for-profit" or "non-profit" rather than "tax-exempt" because of a joke I once heard. The punchline was: "We don’t call it PROFIT… we call it SURPLUS!" Any organization, tax paying or otherwise, has to be generally in the black in order to exist as a going concern.
Besides the tax and "non-profit" issues, these companies have some other differences from the ordinary company. For instance, they can take (tax-free) contributions, must show community benefit, and, for ones like the NCAA, aren’t supposed to be politically active.
They have to file tax forms. These forms are called 990’s. Go to guidestar.org to get a copy of your favorite tax-free organization’s 990. You can find out how much the head honcho, and many of the little honchos, are paid.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:57AM
The real problem here is that you can’t argue BOTH that college athletics are big money-makers that ought to be taxed, AND that they are money-losers that divert funds from academic purposes. The second is correct.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:36AM
Mr Punch–
I think you can. You can argue that most programs are money-losers (which they are), and that some programs are money-makers and should be taxed (which they are). Not least, the prospect of taxation might bring some sunlight to bear on the dark corners of college athletics.