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
July 5th, 2023 at 2:37PM
My experience is that exclusive US unis serve three categories:
The wealthy: As quoted
The specialists: Virtuoso musicians, mathematicians, writers, athletes… – where early accomplishments are possible
The talented outsiders: Those who when given resources and access, accomplish great things
All of these are geared to more recognition, financial and otherwise for the institution. Especially financial.
Curiously, much of the worth of the undergraduate experience is due to the postgraduate and professional programs at these places.
July 6th, 2023 at 7:17AM
Dmitry: I’m with you on wealthy. On talent: People who are already recognized as famous actors by the age of 18 (Jodie Foster, Brooke Shields) seem attractive to the Ivy League; less so more obscure artists w/ uncertain earning potential. Your outsider category would cover, I guess, geographical distribution types (Walter Kirn and soon to be defunct affirmative action types, both of which represent a small portion of admittees). I agree that the powerhouse grad school component of these schools represents a huge advantage for undergrads.
July 6th, 2023 at 5:05PM
Peter Drucker, back in 1969, asserted that a major advantage America had over Europe is that we did *not* give excessive advantages to the graduates of a few ‘elite’ universities:
“One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…”
We as a country are a lot closer to accepting Grande Ecole status for Harvard Law School and similar institutions than we were when Drucker wrote the above.
Hi Margaret!
July 7th, 2023 at 6:52AM
Hey David! Long time etc etc!
Drucker said it well. It’s still true that American corporate execs and other top types tend to come from state schools, if I’m recalling the stats correctly; but it’s also true that you can’t keep replicating a richer and richer, more and more entitled elite from unspeakably over-endowed places like Harvard without social peril – not to mention the injustice of it.
Until Harvard does something about both its obscenely selfish endowment and its admissions policies, placing people like Claudine Gay (or for that matter Drew Faust) in the presidency is purely symbolic. Might as well bring back L Summers.