The story of Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor who has just resigned amid a scandal involving plagiarism, fabulism, and résumé-padding, has rattled a number of skeletons in Western academia’s closet. In 2023, Arday became the youngest black professor at the University of Cambridge when he was appointed professor in the sociology of education at the age of 37. Arday had obtained his PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2015. The son of immigrants from Ghana who lived on a Clapham council estate, he claimed to have overcome autism and other disabilities that left him unable to read or write until he was eighteen. That was just one of his many spectacular achievements. Others included raising £5.5 million for charity and running ultra-marathons at an elite international level. On his brisk voyage to the top of British academia, he was showered with prizes and awarded honorary degrees by four UK universities. It is no exaggeration to call him the darling of British higher education.

Alas, this glittering edifice of renown has now crashed to splinters, sending shrapnel far and wide. Arday has been credibly accused of plagiarising large stretches of his PhD thesis, filing bogus claims of harassment, falsifying data, inventing guest professorships, and telling tall tales about his personal background and achievements. Cambridge University initially leapt to Arday’s defence and called the allegations against him a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility”. Awkwardly, the university has now accepted his resignation letter and announced—through gritted teeth—an investigation into his work and background.

Arday’s fate is only the most spectacular instance of a phenomenon that plagues modern academia in the Anglosphere, and increasingly beyond. I spent dozens of years as a student or a professor at various universities in the US and Germany. All the institutions I studied and worked at were, of course, strongly committed to “diversity” (later supplemented by “equity” and “inclusion”). It graced the front page of the marketing brochure, and it was the main theme of every mission statement. A core task of the diversity bureaucracy within every university was “retention”—that is, preventing dropouts.

It was all well and good, at American universities, to admit a percentage of incoming black students approximately equal to the black share of the US population (thirteen percent), but these students had an unfortunate tendency to drop out more frequently than students from other backgrounds, with only forty percent completing a degree within six years of college enrolment. If only five percent of black students actually graduated, this guaranteed static from advocacy groups and foundations. Here is where the diversity department resorted to the subtle art of “retention.” From the outset, the university ensures every student—in particular, students from “marginalised” backgrounds—may seek special assistance. Many such students contact the administration voluntarily. Others are identified by algorithms and receive a discreet email. The assistant deans or senior officers for retention assess the needs of these students. Are they having family problems? Are they suffering from undiagnosed attention disorders or other mental-health issues? Are they partying too much? Or are they taking courses which their high-school education didn’t prepare them for? And how are their study habits?

There’s nothing objectionable about retention programs, which are also used to straighten out student athletes and the scions of wealthy alumni. Regardless of race, a student from a working-class single-mother home who graduated from a marginally functional high school will face challenges adjusting to university life. Retention programs often help vulnerable students get back on track and graduate successfully. Naturally, the retainers insist that they do not lower academic standards; they heighten student performance. But everybody knows that’s not the whole story.