Before proceeding, the reader should fully understand that, within the University, esteem is defined in a special way. If something in held in high esteem, that thing has been judged likely to improve the University’s rank in the greatly feared annual college survey published by US News & World Report. This rank is, of course, of great personal concern to the University’s Administrators; if the University’s rank rises, so too do their Careers; yet if the rank should fall, they are Toast. —Bryan Pfaffenberger —Prolegomenon to a Concise Model of the University (PfaffenBLOG)

Great satire. I interviewed Pfaffenberger once or twice in some capacity or other when I was at U.Va. (sorry, I don’t feel motivated to dig through my paper archives to verify). He’s a humanities professor who studies technology.