“There is a basic rule of bureaucracy. It is an almost unbreakable rule. Bureaucrats within the bureaucracy never want to hire somebody who is really talented. The presence of such a person within the bureaucracy makes every other person in the bureaucracy look mediocre, which is obviously the case. They are mediocre. At the same time, they don’t want to hire somebody who’s totally incompetent. If word gets out that the bureaucracy hires incompetent people, the people who funded the bureaucracy, meaning a higher up level of bureaucracy, may interfere. They may snoop around to figure out how anybody this incompetent got hired. That threatens the autonomy of the bureaucracy. So, the inherent nature of bureaucracy is to remain mediocre forever.
The mediocrity of college faculties is basic to all education, and always has been. It always will be. To expect anything else is to be terminally naïve.”
– Dr. Gary North
