> their need to advertise admissions, how they talk to the media and university rating services, their relations with China, the student lawsuits they face, their need to manage relations with Oxford the political unit

This all sounds to me like DG's definition of 'bullshit'. David Graeber is an anthropologist, ie, he takes a wide view of humanity: many societies, including societies not that alien to us, manage to function without this kind of work. Why is it suddenly indispensable? It is not a business advice book about running an individual institution, it is a wider social critique about how we have set up our society and economy.

> let him spend a year managing a mid-size organization, say 60-80 employees,

Graeber is an anarchist anthropologist and would critique the idea of a top-down capitalist firm itself (ie, the deeper question: why do we insist on structuring labor this way?). He is not telling anyone the best way to run it.