What's wrong with this picture: Colorado State University President Larry Penley resigns this month and the CSU board hands him a year's salary, or nearly $400,000, on the way out the door.

For perspective, consider what happened to Christine Johnson, the former president of Community College of Denver who was fired in June 2007. She just settled with the state for $60,000, plus attorney's fees.

When a top executive is fired, even when she deserves it as much as Johnson apparently did, you usually expect some sort of settlement to follow. But the community college system seems to have played hardball and kept its payout to a minimum.

So what's the CSU board's excuse for its extravagance? Penley left of his accord, everyone insists. He was not pushed out, with no time to plan his next move.

True, the board was not exactly grief-stricken: "It's better for the state, better for everybody, if he wants to move on - it was just kind of a mutual agreement," said Chairman Doug Jones. But so what if Penley did CSU a favor by departing? So long as his move was voluntary, why does he rate a year's severance pay after only five years on the job?

Jones' explanation seems to be that big shots have grown to expect such gilded treatment.

"A guy's been there five-plus years - it's something that happens more times than not in the world of business or higher ed or wherever," he said.

Shouldn't a university want to save itself $400,000 at a time when the economy is crashing and all hell could break loose on the state's revenue front? Surely officials could have thought of a reason or two to balk at the payout if they had put their minds to it.

That 'diversity' essay

Several newspapers in Colorado, including The Denver Post, have falsely reported that the University of Colorado will require applicants to write additional essays on how they value diversity and how they would build inclusiveness - and that the essays will be worth as much as grades or test scores in the admissions process.

If true, this would amount to appalling news - a total surrender to the lobby of activists seeking to force students to genuflect before its vision of America as a parched land of oppression. In hot pursuit of this political conformity, CU's Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity in 2006 did indeed recommend that prospective students "write an essay for admission on diversity."

Fortunately, CU has not gone that far. The extra essay questions are somewhat different from those the news stories described. Nor will they count as much as grades or test scores.

Besides the existing personal essay, CU applicants will have to explain, for example, in less than 500 words, how they "could enrich our diverse and inclusive community and what are your hopes for your college experience?" That's a question with no prescribed answer or obvious political component. A student might enrich CU's "inclusive community" by playing trumpet in a jazz band, after all.

"We want to see which applicants have a commitment to something larger than themselves," CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard told me. The university is looking for students who are "socially engaged, ethically engaged, who think the world is bigger than him or her," he added.

This is fine up to a point, but only if the admissions office remembers that the most important way most students contribute to the world is to prepare themselves well to be successful in it. A well-trained young scientist, for example, is far more likely to advance human welfare - even if he or she was a socially unengaged bookworm during college - than an extracurricular wunderkind who eventually drops out.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.