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
April 29th, 2010 at 7:56AM
I’m not trying to claim that these schools are doing it right, because I have no way of knowing. But “Local Spring Flora” caught my eye, so I looked at the link. I couldn’t find a syllabus on a quick search, but the class in question meets for 4 hours a session for 14 weeks and is taught by a biology PhD.
If I taught it, it would be a rigorous science class – that’s plenty of classroom hours. And framing a nonmajors course around something that sounds interesting is a good way to engage students, then sneak in the taxonomy, ecology, evolution, physiology.
I am certainly not “haughtily dismissing the entire report” and I have no experience whatsoever with the Texas university system or colleges of education anywhere. That one thing seemed a strange item to pull out for critique without further information.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:02AM
Phiala: I agree with you that there’s not enough information in the article to dismiss this course – I too looked for more information, which was why I was able to link to the schedule of classes. But I couldn’t find more than that. I agree that we need at least a syllabus to be sure this is a gut course.
April 29th, 2010 at 1:54PM
There are actually some pretty good arguments for teaching science in the early grades with reference to observable natural phenomena. Local spring flora isn’t just botany — it ties to weather, soil, insect behavior, etc., etc., as well as to agriculture, which is a science-based activity that is very important in much of Texas.
April 30th, 2010 at 7:24AM
My department is responsible for a chunk of the educational content required by a common ed major track. The state standards are impressive, and I think most graduate schools would be pleased if their MA students could meet them, let alone undergraduate elementary ed students. But–the whole thing is a joke. These students are required to take exactly ONE course in an area that is an integral part of their supposed specialty. Why no more? Something has to give so that they can take the 75+ hours of education classes.