I agree with you to an extent. The diversity hires are in place because Hollywood in general, and Disney in specific, has shed its remaining interest in producing creative arts based entertainment. The bean counters are firmly in charge in a way they weren't a few decades ago. When Michael Eisner was Disney chairman before Bob Iger, he was fully bought into the idea of the Magic Kingdom and all of the resplendent Disney magic that accompanied it. He realised that they needed to consistently produce amazing experiences that inspired people and made them want to come back to experience that feeling again and again. And that grew Disney into the creative powerhouse that it was at the end of his tenure. When Iger came on board, he saw a big pot of cash and his big idea was to buy up as much of the competition as he possibly could, hoping that the creativity they brought to the company would sustain their growth. It worked for a good while, but Iger has always been focused on the stock price and not the magic. So when his stable of purchased IP got stale, as all properties do, there was nobody in this now near-monopoly who was empowered to inspire and fund the creatives in the was Eisner championed them.

Now that Disney was fully controlled by the suits and really being run exclusively for the benefit of Wall Street, it was time to squeeze it like a ripe fruit and wring every dollar they could out of it. And that worked in spades. But as the dollars got fewer, they had to start to rely on budget tightening to keep their quarterly earnings reports looking healthy. And budget tightening means fewer dollars for keeping the parks looking good, the new attractions under construction, and taking risks on making great movie experiences. As they went along, they first started running the movies by committee. After all, if you're going to sink a quarter of a billion dollars into the thing, you want it to return a billion plus for your investment, right? And to the suits, the best way to ensure that is by decreeing "do it the same as last time, but just a little bit different". This started to make the movies more bland and less interesting. And as they started losing interest and money, they doubled down on that strategy. Meanwhile in the boardroom, Disney realized that ESG scores were becoming a big thing and if they wanted to keep their stock price inflated, they were going to have to do more than entertain an audience. They were going to have to appeal to the largest institutional investors out there in order to keep the bucks rolling in to continue lifting their share price. And the biggest is Blackrock, whose retard chairman came up with the idea of ESG scores. So if you wanted to get Blackrock's attention and dollars, you had to suck their equitable and inclusive dick. So Iger opened up Disney's corporate mouth wide and went all the way down to the root. They introduced a corporate policy of filling quotas instead of letting merit determine who got the jobs. And so diversity - and not quality - became The Law of the Kingdom.

But they couldn't find enough people of insert identity group here who could do the jobs, so they went searching for people who at least had pieces of paper that showed they were at a minimum, certified to be able to do the job in question. Enter the universities to our little tale of woe. Now, any legacy of bravery or diversity of thought that western universities may once have retained the aroma of has long been extinguished and scrubbed clean with the bleach of political correctness. As a result, the universities have become less and less distinct from the degree mills whose business plans are to give out diplomas in return for cash. Similar to Disney (but decades earlier to the party), as the universities' budgets became more and more constrained, they became less bold and more beholden to the whims of the people who were paying the tuition, to the point where now, many institutions' curriculum are subject to vetting approval by the students before it is taught to them. At this point, a degree in almost anything you want is available to anyone who is willing to go into student debt and pony up the right price.

As such, we do indeed have low IQ / high narcissism types regularly "earning" their PhDs in everything from gender studies to (scarily) medicine without necessarily having the mental capacity to be able to do anything other than turn everything they touch to shit. So we agree there.

However, I maintain my opinion about a lack of life experience in these stunning and brave new quota hires. More and more, I'm seeing higher education splitting into two pathways - community colleges and trade schools for those who can't afford the tuition and university degrees for those who can. And those who can afford a university degree are highly likely to be the ones who have been born into wealth and sheltered from real life experiences. Sure, their parents probably took them on trips to places around the world and bought them the very best educational certificates that money can buy, but at the same time, they never had to look at a bill and wonder where the money is going to come from. They may have had "life experiences", but not the kind where there was the possibility of wandering into the wilderness with a friend and getting lost for a few days. Or doing stupid shit because you were out on your own recognizance because both your parents were working and so they just trusted you to not kill yourself until they got home. Those are the kinds of life experiences that lead to good storytelling. Uncertainty. Conflict. Risk. Actual danger. People wrapped in bubble wrap from childhood can read about it, but they'll never really know it. And so they can't tell compelling stories about it.