Conventional universities are forced into this one-to-many, someone lecturing to a timetable, because they have buildings to fill… In the online world you don’t need to fill buildings or lecture theatres with people and you don’t need to be trapped into a lecture timetable…
Gradually, determinedly, the online heroes lead us out of the darkness of the past.
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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.
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 21st, 2011 at 9:52AM
A. The point of attending a college is not education, but certification, largely meaningless in most cases.
B. The withdrawal of public funds forces colleges into a corporate model (the “education industry”). Corporations minimize spending and maximize income.
C. There is no meaningful oversight of education at the local, state, or national level.
Not a surprise, then, that the tech people are influential. The cheapening of university degrees began decades ago, before the rise of technology (with the active complicity of the faculty). The results have not been pretty. Technology is not a cause, but an instrument useful to the corporation. The cheapening continues.
The call for higher graduation rates — an extraordinarily stupid idea — will accelerate the process.
March 21st, 2011 at 4:54PM
“Lord Jim Knight, former education minister in England, has had a long interest in educational technology.” Perhaps a fan of Conrad to style himself so.
He says, “Some people tell me we should be looking at perhaps more of an American model, where you do the first year or two of your degree from home at a community college – in the UK that could be a further education college or even at school – and you only go to finish off when you really need access to the research, your senior lecturer, your director of studies face to face.” American model? News to me here in America.