← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“[W]hile [University of Kentucky President Lee Todd] was touting the value of a Top 20 degree, the real UK value, measured in relation to UK’s rankings vs. the cost to attend, was doing just the opposite. It was going down in value: from Todd’s arrival to now, students now pay twice as much for a statistically worse-ranked education.”

Yes, UK’s now richly retired last president gassed on endlessly about how UK was on the verge of becoming a top-twenty university. How could it not soar into that empyrean? It spent most of its money on corrupt coaches and apathetic administrators. It embarrassed itself on a regular basis. It spat on the state’s most important living writer, Wendell Berry. Ain’t that how it’s done?

Actually, no. As this commenter – on an article about the newest faculty member on the university’s board of trustees – points out, Todd’s master plan trashed the school’s ranking and offered students an ever more amply paid, notoriously corrupt, sports program, coupled with angry, undercompensated faculty. Not really a recipe for a high US News and World Report outcome, though perhaps UK’s administration believes that the magazine uses sports wins in determining rankings.

***************************************

The new trustee, Irina Voro, points out that the school treats faculty like “bumpkins.” Plus she “cited a Russian proverb: ‘A fish starts to be rotten at the top.'” Plus, she said that “a friend who is a former UK auditor couldn’t decipher the UK budget that is furnished to each UK trustee.”

Well, only a bumpkin wouldn’t realize that when you’ve got a sports program like UK’s, a lot of sleights of hand are called for.

Margaret Soltan, August 25, 2011 7:16AM
Posted in: professors

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=32151

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

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

Archives

Categories