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 23rd, 2011 at 12:08PM
It sounds like you think that games, Facebook, YouTube, music, and the rest of the internet somehow prevent people from learning algebra. I think that online schools are completely ridiculous but not because technology makes people stupid. Actually, it does just the opposite. The problem with online high schools is that the socialization aspect, which is the most important aspect of any secondary education, is gone.
April 23rd, 2011 at 1:03PM
Clarissa: I agree with you that being with other people – this was my point about prison being better than an online school – is really important. Being with students as well as teachers.
But my point about the technology is not that it makes people stupid. It simply distracts people. Few teenagers have the self-discipline to follow an online course under these circumstances.
April 23rd, 2011 at 10:40PM
i am going to say i agree with both sides. i am 17 years old and graduating a year early because i paid to take extra classes that the state wouldnt cover. ( i did this so i could enlist in the army the day i turned 17). I am now however an enrolled student at bluesky. Yes you do not socialize and i find it hard to stay on task at times with the wide variety of things to do on the internet, but bluesky is a great school. The give a decent amount of homework and have teachers to call if you need help. As for graduating students that do not meet requirments i do not know, i only enrolled because i was 3 credits shy and i can work full time this way. But before you make judgements on something maybe you should get the truth by looking into it a little deeper. The news we see from media/television is great but what the army has tought me in the last year, is that television does not always have their facts right either. And for that matter sometimes they flat out lie, we are humans and it’s in our nature. But that is my say on the matter anyways.
April 23rd, 2011 at 11:58PM
david: Many thanks for your comment. I agree with you that one should look as deeply as possible at things in order to get at the truth. I am relying here on the state of Minnesota having done a good job of reviewing your school before taking the remarkable decision to shut it down.
Your situation at the school is of course atypical. You are picking up a few credits there; if I understand what you’re saying, you got the bulk of your high school education elsewhere (at a non-online school, I’m assuming). So we cannot learn much from your experience of the school.