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
November 3rd, 2010 at 10:17AM
I’ve heard rumors for a while about the slipping standards at the U of Manitoba. Had no idea things were that bad, though.
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:21AM
One of my favorite jokes:
Did you hear about the Soviet soldier who got 25 years in gulag for calling his general an idiot?
Isn’t that a bit harsh?
No. He got six months for insubordination and the rest for revealing a state secret.
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:24AM
Hope they don’t teach Civil Enginering at that school…
November 3rd, 2010 at 11:43AM
They have both a law program and a medical school. I wonder how many of those students got their certificates without completing the required courses. In fact, I’ll admit to being a bit anxious to learn the answer to that…
November 3rd, 2010 at 12:44PM
It’s odd that there’s no mention of the student’s dissertation. He repeatedly failed his comps, he hadn’t completed the required courses– but still (apparently) had a thesis advisor, a completed dissertation and a thesis defense? Or am I just babbling about ancient and irrelevant academic lore?
November 3rd, 2010 at 12:48PM
There are low standards in math classes. I teach at a community college and there is pressure to pass more students. Tests I gave 10 years ago would be failed by 75% of my students today. College has become one giant scam in my opinion.
November 3rd, 2010 at 3:03PM
As an ABD, I applied for a 1-year position there over 25 years ago. It was the most extraordinary conference interview I ever had. The Manitoba guy apologized for the ghastliness of the weather there, the low salary, the teaching load, the mediocrity of the students, etc., etc; by the end, he had essentially apologized for the institution’s very existence. I did not get the job and have no idea who did, but I think it is safe to say that none of the applicants spent much time mourning over a rejection letter.
November 3rd, 2010 at 4:09PM
Hmm…
Perhaps this is tangential, but…
In some ways I am pleased that accommodations are being made for people. About 35 year ago, at a good place that will be unnamed, I had a student who would work 50% of his exams 100% correct. He claimed, and I believe correctly, that if he had more time he could do better. Unfortunately, at that time, there was nothing that could be done about the situation.
Maybe that was my fault, but I was a rookie.
I did switch to a policy of oral exams upon request, but not too many students took me up on it. Here it is pretty easy to discover what a student does, and doesn’t, know. One might think that the grading of an oral exam might be a problem, but very rarely was there ever disagreement and most of the time my grade was higher than the student’s self-assessment.
I am happy to give students, who have good reasons, accommodations. I am also happy when the great majority of my students leave exams a little early.
I am also a leetle curious about this one. My mantra is that a PhD is a research degree. “Did this person have a thesis and how good was it?” would be the first thing I’d like to know.
November 3rd, 2010 at 5:10PM
tp: LOL.
November 4th, 2010 at 10:42AM
[…] H/T: University Diaries. […]
November 5th, 2010 at 2:03AM
Mmmh. Maybe this person truly has panic/anxiety attacks when in a stressful situation (e.g. an exam), but did a good PhD thesis.
It’s difficult to know where to draw the line. This is not a binary issue : what to with do with a person whose anxiety is not diagnosed as warranting exemption from exams, but is almost there?