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“I think the academic counselors realized that and the tutors recognized it and frankly the folks up the food chain for the most part recognized it. But nobody wants to rock the boat because it’s big money.”

When UD says big-time sports destroy universities, this is what she has in mind. People want to think UNC Chapel Hill is a good school, a reputable school, but it’s not. It’s the sort of place that cynically designates entire departments as dumping grounds for athletes UNC would rather not educate because football and basketball are big money. The French worry about a cultural degeneration in their country that they refer to as Italianization. It’s too bad American universities don’t know enough to worry about Auburnization. UNC is definitely getting there.

Margaret Soltan, May 8, 2012 1:18PM
Posted in: sport

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5 Responses to ““I think the academic counselors realized that and the tutors recognized it and frankly the folks up the food chain for the most part recognized it. But nobody wants to rock the boat because it’s big money.””

  1. theprofessor Says:

    A number of years ago, a new coach flat-out asked the long-time faculty liaison (OK, adopted “mom” for the team) for a list of gut courses, easy professors, and reliable faculty “team players.” She told him to go to hell and promptly quit her role as adviser. We need more of that.

    The coach? Three and out, if I recall. The losing record was probably the decisive factor, but the burglary rap against a few players probably didn’t help.

  2. “A Cause, Not a Discipline” | Professor Mondo Says:

    […] fraud involving (among others) a significant percentage of the school’s athletes. Via Margaret Soltan, we learn that certain classes (with nearly 40% football and basketball enrollment, as compared to […]

  3. Aggie Dog Says:

    I was sort of thinking that Texas A&M, with its new membership in the SEC, and its faculty under assault by the administration, was undergoing a process of Auburnization. Except that Auburn has a better English Department than we do.

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    True, Aggie Dog.

  5. University Diaries » The complex and delicate synergy… Says:

    […] media were not caught up in Penn State’s football-related criminality, they might be focused on UNC’s mendacity […]

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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.
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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.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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