Being that I’ve worked in higher ed for 4 years now, I’d say the authors are pretty much nailing it. The only place I part company with them is on the level of danger the practice has as it stifles free expression not only on the campus, but in the areas that surround it.
However, there is a shining beacon in all this–some bright entrepreneur could make a fortune by starting a service to aggregate the names, any publicly available identifying information (schools attended, hometown and so on) and publicly available spewings of these twits into a subscription database. Potential employers could use it to search for applicants that they want to weed out of applicant pools at hiring time.
I don’t think “self-righteous arrogant ass” is a protected class yet.
I worked in "higher education" (state university) for 15 years, and watched it go slowly down-hill as the campus was politicized.
Not politicized as in "Liberal" or "Conservative", but as in "we don't want you to teach us the things you think we should know … we want you to recognize that we 18 year olds are real people with real opinions, and don't give us shit we don't want".
What we need to do is to re-install military conscription, so young folks can learn different meanings of the word "discomfort".