← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Closing Law Schools, Fraternities, Football Programs…

… It’s drinking-up time at the American university, and although we know all conditioned things are impermanent, a lot of people seem really, really pissed about it.

Yes, yes, only one football program has actually shut down.

As for fraternities [aka eat or be eaten clubs, dahling]: Like vampires, they cannot truly be killed. Fraternities can be suspended while crews hose down the vomit, but they almost always come back to haze again, until once again they are suspended, etc.

Even when a school or a national organization officially shutters them, fraternities live on as rogue operations just off campus.

Fraternities will never authentically be threatened with extinction. They are too important to the nation. The behaviors and attitudes you learn at a fraternity are structural to the leadership of America’s elite financial organizations. Fraternities are not about college; they are about Goldman Sachs.

And on law schools… How has it come to this? Can we actually be about to witness the shuttering of some of them?

Probably.

It’s all about the tragic confluence of the we’ll accredit your Aunt Tillie’s ass ABA, the ne touche pas my salary and course load law professioriate, and a collapsed job market.

In response to the collapsed job market, the ABA continues to accredit new schools.

I know you think that this cannot possibly be true, but it is. Every ten seconds the ABA accredits a new American law school.

Well, not every ten seconds. But frequently.

Margaret Soltan, December 5, 2014 2:17AM
Posted in: the university

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=46691

One Response to “Closing Law Schools, Fraternities, Football Programs…”

  1. http://www./ Says:

    Robert Spencer has a good piece published at Human Events today that is related to the subject matter addressed in this piece. Not sure which is a more depressing read, but read them we must if we want to be grounded in reality.

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