University Diaries » Texas Messed With

UD finds moving the efforts of this recent University of Texas graduate to consider some very basic and at the same time complicated truths.

His writing is rather awkward, but UD doesn’t mind, because the awkwardness reflects a deepening understanding of things. You can see the writer grappling, even as he writes, with changes in his way of regarding the world. Bravo.

… Based on its decisions in the Realignment Madness and its recent paranoia related to football practices (even the two “open” practices), UT is starting to feel less like a college team — and more like a pro team — than any other school in the country. In fact, some actions from pro teams could even be viewed as being more accessible and fan-friendly than some of the recent decrees coming from Belmont. As a whole, these decisions are not necessarily a bad thing, but they take away from what has been traditionally identified as the typical relationship between a college program and its most dedicated fans. And it is these type of bonds that are supposed to transcend the experience of fans of a professional franchise.

Going even deeper, I’m still trying to fully understand why athletics even matters. … [I]t’s hard for me to grasp how winning or losing football games really affects the academic stature of the University of Texas, yet those games are something I spend hours upon hours obsessing about…

… [T]he current hyper-monetization and professionalization of college athletics has made rooting for the Texas Longhorns feel more like rooting for a professional franchise than it ever has in the past. And that undercuts the nature of the warm and fuzzy feelings over school and state pride. It’s different (and easier) to root for the University of Texas than to root for Texas, Inc.

The University of Texas represents the dream come true of all big time university sports programs. It’s a staggeringly superior champ, ultra buffed and studly.

This fan registers the irony of his disengagement from the team just at its greatest moment of dominance. He notes that along with annihilating the competition, it has annihilated the university.

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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.
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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.
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University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
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The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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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.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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[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.
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