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
March 8th, 2010 at 5:22PM
I taught at Drexel for just over a year (Fall ’05 – Fall ’06). I was paid horribly little to do so ($2200 a section, usually only 1-2 sections of 30 students at a time). My students ranged from the very bright, very engaged, and very computer literate to the dull, disadvantaged, and the chronically computer illiterate (word processing seemed beyond them). At times, I seriously doubted there was anyone in the middle ground between the two.
During this time period, I had an ever-increasing number of laptop users. Some of them really did use them for notes! How could I tell? They looked up from their screens on occasion when I spoke. I saw their brows crinkle when I posed a question. They actually (God Forbid!) raised their hands and asked questions or otherwise participated in class. Also, the light blazing from the screen onto their faces was a crisp white.
But, that group was a fraction of the laptop users. I caught several watching videos in class (porn maybe?), usually when the light flickered on their faces from the shifting images rolling in front of them. I even kicked one kid out when he did it when I sat behind him during a video session. (Forgive me, UD…sometimes a well-chosen video can encapsulate an idea better than any lecture I can give or the book they didn’t read!) Not surprisingly, he also failed every exam and never submitted any of the 3 essays. Did he think his mere physical presence would somehow translate into a passing grade?
In classes where some students would thank me for discussing stuff they’d never thought to think about, I had cadavers (an excellent description!) who had an equal say on evaluations that factored into whether I would be rehired the next term. (P.S. I eventually wasn’t.)
Drexel is also HUGE in the online course thing. I was even asked to create a few online classes for that department where I was an adjunct! I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had done it. Would I still be employed there? Or would the zombies have risen to revolt there too?
March 9th, 2010 at 12:30AM
Cadavers? Cadavers!
“Cadaver” is a perfect shorthand for “a student dead to the classroom, distracted by his computer.” Thank you, UD.