4 ideas
His life centres on a cow he received as a gift from a contractor with business interests on campus. The cowshed he builds beside his official residence becomes the real seat of university power, and teachers and petitioners crowd there to praise the animal as a way of winning his favour.
When power is divided among factions that cannot tolerate each other's champions, the top office goes to whoever threatens no one. The winner is a figure with no convictions, no following and no ideas. This mediocrity is not an accident of selection but its purpose, because a hollow leader can be steered by whichever faction gains his ear.
In a patronage system, access to a powerful person is sought through whatever he visibly cares about, however trivial. Supplicants court the pet, the hobby or the spouse instead of arguing on the merits. Watching where courtiers gather shows where power actually sits, and here that was a cowshed rather than the office or the senate.
Once appointments and advancement depend on party-aligned faction membership, loyalty rather than scholarship becomes the university's working currency. Teachers put their energy into positioning, gossip and courting patrons. What remains is an institution that keeps the offices and rituals of learning while producing almost no thought.