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
April 18th, 2021 at 5:34PM
A quaint, highly contagious notion persists that college football teams scour inner cities, midwest prairies, and overpopulated ocean bordering states to find unique talent for their rosters. Once a candidate is identified, coaches show up at prospects house, and over cookies and milk, induce the kid, and his parents, that junior will best be served by attending the supplicant’s institution of higher learning.
Uhhhhh, no, that ain’t how it works. The most important element in this high school-college-pro sports cycle is the high school coach. He, with help of the high school administration and school district, is going to put together a system which recruits talented young teens to attend the high school. It’s the high school coach who determines what colleges will recruit their players, which colleges the kids will attend, and do what’s needed to get that kid delivered. Power 5s aren’t going to waste resources trying to find cadre when they know that certain high school programs will churn out turn players ready to perform. IMG Academy, in Brandeton, FL was created primarily to prepare teenagers for college and pro sports. It’s analogous to Nick Bolletteri’s development of the the tennis boarding school, which manufactures pro tennis’ inventory.. Football is following the same business model by utilizing a few high school programs to create 5 star recruits.
But, successful high school coaches need resources and facilities, and as the NYT points out, that where the boosters show up. They’ll connect player to coach, school to family, raise money, which is how the game is rigged. It’s not a coincidence that two of the most dominant high school athletic programs in USAAmerica are SoCal catholic high schools, Mater Dei, and St.John Bosco. Look at how many 5 and 4 star football players are created at both schools, and look where they end up. The corruption is apparent if you bother to look…
April 19th, 2021 at 8:37AM
charlie: Well said and so true. I seem to recall you were yourself a player, and that you know much of this from the inside. Anyway – no one should be surprised when high school football scandals exactly mirror college.
April 19th, 2021 at 5:45PM
Yup. UD, I was recruited for college football. My parents weren’t involved, nor approached. My high school coaches were the ones who told me which schools had interest, which programs I should respond to, and which ones to ignore. I can’t remember any recruiting propaganda ever sent to the house, but I received quite a lot at school, and the athletic director would be the one that gave it to me.
You’ll read media reports regarding head coaches doing crazy stunts to lure a highly rated high school player, ala, Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, and his antics. That’s nothing but PR schtick. Player recruitment is done by the position/assistant coaches and coordinators, not the head coach. The main reason, IMO, is to create plausible deniability when cash is handed out, cars given away, or recruits having sex with hookers. Not that anything such as that happened with me, but I was kicked out of high school start of my senior year, which ended all college recruitment. If that hadn’t occurred, I would have a more detailed account. Despite that, it was the assistants and position coaches that spoke with my high school coaches, who in turn, would create the meet and greets.
Funny thing, the three uni programs that were coming after me the hardest, Cal-State Fullerton, Cal-State Long Beach, and University of the Pacfic, all dropped football a few years after they stopped recruiting me. I’d like to think that if I had shown up, they’d still be playing the game. More than likely, they were simply poor judges of athletic ability….