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
June 6th, 2014 at 2:14PM
“Incoming President Jim Tressel, former executive vice president for student success at the University of Akron”
There is always PLENTY of money for these bogus administrative positions, even when those positions are made up for failed coaches. Here at our DIII school in the hinterlands, we are adding them at the same time we are NOT replacing faculty.
June 6th, 2014 at 2:22PM
JND: Yes – the main difficulty with these positions is coming up with names for them…
June 6th, 2014 at 7:01PM
UD’s information and judgment are spot on. Cutbacks announced this week at Youngstown State didn’t lay a glove on the patronage-and-kickback slobs among the staffers there. Although they number probably no more than 1% or 2% of payroll, they surround themselves with irregularly hired suck-ups, and make their bones by aggressively undermining the good work of others.
I hesitate to give free advice out of my skill set–I’m not an academic–but I’d approach a job offer from Youngstown State with caution. Take the job if you need to, live frugally, and keep your CV out there.
June 7th, 2014 at 1:08PM
Here’s but one example of administrative incompetence at Youngstown State as reported in the local paper.
Administrator Smith asked that two new positions be created and funded. Higher Administrator Jones okayed the positions and candidate interviews, but deferred a funding decision until August.
H. A. Jones’s stated reason for okaying the positions and interviews was that candidates would unlikely be persuaded to leave their current employment if interviewed and offered a position just before the fall term. But Jones had just said no decision on funding would be made until just before the fall term.
What do you think the chances are that job candidates will get an honest interview? What do you think the chances are of a miscommunication that has a candidate believing he’d been offered a position only to have the offer “retracted” at the last moment?
Sure, you can probably honestly interview someone for an unfunded position, but if your hiring theory is that the candidate you want is unlikely to be available when you’re able to hire him, you just created an incentive to lie.