There was a great editorial in the paper here yesterday by John Leo about something similar. It was actually about how many colleges give out awards to and awards named after people who completely DO NOT deserve to have awards given to or named after them; murderers, America haters, cop-killers.
It made me want to go crack some Academia skulls after rading that artcle. I see things like what Sage described and feel so utterly helpless to prevent society from going all to crap.