Yesterday, Peter Wood wrote a delightful piece on the University of Vermont’s search for a “residence life professional” to work in its student ethics center. Why is it, he asks, that the university is so insistent on hiring someone who comes with all the mental baggage of a “commitment to diversity”? The answer, I think, is that universities don’t want to have anyone on the payroll who doesn’t vigorously assent to the whole diversity/social-engineering project.

I’d like to ask why it’s necessary to have such a position at all. Shouldn’t professors tell the students the rules about plagiarism and cheating? Do the students of UVM and state taxpayers need to pay for a full-time staffer to advise students on matters of academic ethics? No, but it appears they’ll have no choice.

I have often argued that only a very wealthy country could afford to have a higher-education system that costs so much and accomplishes so little. Thanks to Peter Wood for another good illustration.