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
December 30th, 2012 at 10:24AM
“A “seat license” is a fee that teams make their fans pay just to reserve the right to buy the actual tickets. They call it a donation – which is a stretch, since every fan apparently decided to donate exactly the same amount, or lose our tickets. But that allows us to claim it as a gift to a state university, and a tax deduction.”
I don’t understand why this would not be tax fraud. Charitable contributions are supposed to be deductible only to the extent that no valuable goods/services were provided to the giver in consideration of the gift. This is normally stated on the receipt…for example, the receipt for my donation to the MIT D-Lab (technology for poor countries) contained the following line:
“This email serves as your acknowledgment for income tax purposes in conformance with current IRS regulations. We confirm that neither goods nor services were given to you by MIT in exchange for this gift.”
So how do universities get away with selling “seat licenses,” which obviously provide a service, as something tax-deductible?
December 30th, 2012 at 11:01AM
david: Ask all the boys in Congress.
December 30th, 2012 at 11:12AM
Is there specific legislation that exempts this sort of thing, or has the IRS simply chosen not to bring any cases?
December 30th, 2012 at 11:34AM
http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/21269-is-tax-incentive-for-college-football-season-ticket-holders-fair.html
December 30th, 2012 at 2:19PM
Thanks…that certainly explains the history here.
Now, I wonder about the deductibility of alumni contributions that serve partly as implicit bribes to get their kids over the threshold of admissions…seems like some issues have been raised about this recently.
January 2nd, 2013 at 3:35PM
david foster, man, you said it: ” . . . the deductibility of alumni contributions that serve partly as implicit bribes . . .”. Not just their own kids, either, if some of the reports I’ve heard have reached a reasonable level of plausibility.