What's wrong with taking care of your customers? :: TNR Online

Answer: When you confuse your employees for your customers.

William J. Stuntz (professor, Harvard Law School) is on the case:

Evidently, most of my Arts and Sciences colleagues prefer a president who knows and cares too little about what they do to criticize it, whose comments on their job performance consist only of the occasional pat on the back. Most universities work that way: like an awards dinner for a child's soccer league--no distinctions are drawn; everyone gets a prize. Harvard seemed, briefly, to set a different standard. No longer.
. . .
It is as if you took the bottom half of GM's factory workers a half-century ago and told them to run the corporation, promising that whatever they did, their jobs were guaranteed and their pay could only rise. It's a great gig while it lasts.
. . .
It's hard to imagine another such reform-minded president in a top university anytime soon. From now on, the forces pushing change will all come from the outside. Inside, we will see only denial and resistance, in equal measure. The downward spiral will accelerate.

Read the whole thing. Thanks to Instapundit for the link.