THE DOWNSIDE OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE. All too often, middle managers at universities are failed scholars who have little understanding of what is involved in producing research, and cannot comprehend how destructive of real research their efforts are. Mungowitz End has a lament about middle managers at Duke.

Whole floors of academic buildings are being converted from faculty office space (ie, place where work is actively done) to administrative office space (ie, places where work is actively prevented).

King at SCSU Scholars sees the same thing.

No faculty member is safe when the Faculty Senate and Academic Affairs Council are in session. Send 'em back to their offices, let them read and write, if they can.

If memory serves, a useful metric for the quality of a university is the difficulty of obtaining a quorum at the faculty senate.