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UD will admit to enjoying The Decline of Western…

… Kentucky University. Among America’s worst universities, WKU has a president who, faced with hard facts (via the Knight Commission) about his school’s indifference to anything other than athletics, says “There’s no good that can come from making statistical comparisons to try to prove a point.”

From the moment one of its trustees told a faculty member worried about the school’s switch to Division 1-A football that “People on this board dedicate their time for free. They have better things to do than let some university professor just keep talking,” UD has had a weakness for brainless, money-hemorrhaging, Bobby Petrino-worshipping WKU.

WKU spends over $36,000 per student-athlete and only $11,000 per full-time student — nearly a $25,000 gap — according to a study by the Knight Commission, a third-party organization that looks at both academic and athletic spending for universities across the country.

Faculty regent Patricia Minter raised concern over the spending disparity in last month’s Board of Regents meeting, citing the study and other statistics in her sole opposition [to] new head football coach Jeff Brohm’s contract.

“Faculty find it devastating that we continue to pay such large amounts of money for something that is ultimately really nice and fine, but it’s not the essential part of the university mission,” she said. “Apparently, we don’t have a problem underfunding the vital parts of the university mission, and that continues to be troubling.”

Sole opposition. Some broad. Figures.

Margaret Soltan, February 21, 2014 11:10AM
Posted in: sport

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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
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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...
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