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
February 16th, 2020 at 2:05PM
Trumpster LOVES him some for profit uni grift. After all, he was involved in two of them, Trump University, AND, Trump Institute!! Given all that, don’t expect any oversight…
February 16th, 2020 at 4:22PM
Our local Podunk Tech, a onetime backstop commuter school for ethnic locals, has had hundreds of housing units popping up the last decade in 10 or 12 dormitories. Plus, there’s been aggressive recruiting of Middle Eastern, Asian Indian, and a few Eastern European and Chinese students who pay full freight.
I’d like to believe it’s all in the interest of larnin’ about them thar’ other kulchurs and international comity, but my belly-feel tells me money and power are the big drivers.
We had one local property that was likely worth no more than $400 thousand change hands for $1.1 million before its mostly empty buildings were demolished and a new dorm plunked atop the land.
February 16th, 2020 at 9:37PM
Hey Jack, nice to see you again. It appears that what you’re describing regarding the local property is a “land flip” scheme. That was prevelant during the S&L debacle, where those institutions lent money to a tight circle of speculators who bought and sold property, not because their was any financial efficacy in the deall, but simply to bid the value up, and then walk away when all of the equity had been siphoned off. It was a crime if the scheme’s intenet was to defraud the institutions that made the loans.
Can’t say what you’re describing at Podunk Tech is the same thing. But why would any institution make loans to build college dorms, when for the past eight years, aggregate college enrollment has fallen? I’m guessing Podunk Tech ain’t singular, but is as you describe it, a not too selelctive regional commuter school. Why would anyone bid up the price of that particular asset?
February 16th, 2020 at 11:53PM
Charlie, I’m not sure of the financing details, which were published in the local paper, and seemed to me needlessly complicated. But, I’m not in the real estate finance business.
The prices paid for properties that had been empty for years, had fallen into disrepair, were slated for demolition, and likely had no other bidders were eye-popping.
Good to see you and Margaret and a few others are still at it.
February 17th, 2020 at 11:21AM
Long practiced around these parts. Back when then-Mayor Hornswoggle was in office over a decade ago, vacant and distressed properties in part of the downtown quietly started changing hands repeatedly, with prices zooming upward and many of the mortgages provided by a particular local bank headed by the local Democrats’ financial godfather. No renovations were taking place, mind you, and the purchasers were shell companies within shell companies. Then, about nine months after the flipping started, Mayor Hornswoggle announced that a new civic arena would be constructed in a most unexpected place, and you can guess where by now. The momentary owners of the real estate received a most handsome price for their properties. The hideous building was shoehorned into a small space with virtually no adjacent parking, replacing a 60 year old building that had been renovated only a few years before, was located on a major highway and surrounded by acres of adjacent parking.
February 18th, 2020 at 9:35AM
theprofessor, thanks.