The DEI-industrial complex may be in tatters across the productive sectors of American society, but it’s hanging tough in the do-nothing, phony-baloney world of higher education.

Take the University of Massachusetts. Please.

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2024 UMass employee payroll: ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’ database

ZooMass is a joke. Can we all agree on that? Which is why it’s always so instructive to take an annual look at their payroll.

Higher-ed bloat is not just a DEI problem, of course. Almost all liberal-arts colleges are largely staffed by overpaid, underworked, over-credentialed yet totally undereducated clowns.

All of whom insist on being called “Dr.”

Overall, DEI is fading because control of American society is about to be regained by Americans. A front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal summed it up yesterday:

“CEO’s Kill Policies Before Inauguration / Diversity, climate initiatives gutted.”

But they’re talking about industries that must have to… produce something. You know, goods and services. In the Dreaded Private Sector, you are required to answer to customers, or stockholders, or somebody.

That’s not ZooMass, or any US colleges for that matter. At least not the so-called “elite” schools, which ZooMass most certainly isn’t.

But it’s a state school, so money is no problem.

The state comptroller put out the annual payroll this week. I ran the first 200 names at UMass. My list ended at an “associate vice chancellor” making $291,585 a year. Shane Conklin, you are number 200 of the school’s top earners.

But in fact I was surprised when I started going over the list of ridiculous titles that they give one another, looking for any of the “dei” words — diversity, equity, inclusion.

I got down to number 58 before I saw the “deputy VP, Acad&Stu Affairs & Equity.

That would be Nefertiti — for that is indeed her name — Walker, listed at $375,522.19.

With a name like that, Nefertiti had to be going places in higher education. And indeed the comptroller’s list turns out to be outdated. A UMass press release from November said she’s since been promoted to “senior vice president” and her salary is up to $443,456 a year.

That puts her up at number 35 on the list of UMass’ top earners. She’s just behind Murugappan Muthukumar and Hong Yu, and just ahead of Kumble Subbaswamy, Sheldon Zhang and Mohsen Jalali Roudsari.

Nefertiti is of course a “doctor.” Her degree is in “Sports Management.”

The original Nefertiti was, of course, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. An inspired move by Neferiti’s parents, to give her a name that tells it all. I wish I had thought of such brilliant PC branding for my daughters.

I should have named them Cleopatra Jones Carr or Foxy Brown Carr — do you know how much that would have saved me on college tuitions, not to mention tutors for the SATs, because colleges wouldn’t have considered anything beyond their names before accepting them?

In case you were wondering, UMass recently hired a new “vice chancellor for equity and inclusion, chief diversity officer.”

That would be “Dr.” Marsha McGriff, an “esteemed scholar and practitioner,” whatever that means.

She went to Tuskegee and Creighton and her dissertation was “a qualitative phenomenological study” on, you guessed it, the barriers faced by black women in politics, including “Lack of Time” and “Lack of Financial Support.”

Financial Support is not a problem for McGriff. She’s being paid $325,000 a year. Practice makes perfect, I guess. She was just hired last year — at ZooMass, a $325K job is considered an entry-level position.

In this very important office, Dr. McGriff oversees a staff of 16 people, including an “associate vice chancellor” ($271,830 a year) and two “assistant vice chancellors” ($128,000 and $120,000, respectively).

The $128K assistant vice chancellor, by the way, holds “climate related office hours.” I wonder if complaints spike more during rainy spells, or cold snaps.

The most ZooMass job description I came across this year was for one Carolyn Brownawell.

She is the “Chief People Strategy Officer & deputy executive vice chancellor.”

People Strategy Officer? Is this another Marty Meehan gag on the taxpayers? And she’s the “Chief People Strategy Officer,” which seems to imply that there are other, subordinate People Strategy Officers.

I just hope that, as Chief People Strategy Officer, Carolyn is a “people person.” She must be, because last year she grabbed $453,966.45.

Not bad for someone not named Nefertiti. Think how much she’d be getting if instead of Carolyn Brownawell, her name were Foxy Brownawell.

Back in the 60’s, when I was a kid, I lived just up the road from Amherst. The area was known then as the Pioneer Valley. Not too many pioneers left now, obviously.

When I was growing up, there were dairy farms in the area. And corn fields, to provide feed for the cattle. There were also tobacco farms and apple orchards, as well as a pickle-processing plant.

Greenfield had a tool-and-die factory on the Deerfield River. In Springfield, they manufactured gasoline pumps.

In other words, people in western Massachusetts grew or made things you needed to live. Things you could eat, or hold in your hand.

Back then people worked hard, and none of them made anywhere near what these UMass morons make, for doing absolutely nothing of consequence.

And not one of my old neighbors ever had any of these titles that UMass’ six-figure bloviators collect like bottle caps — associate, assistant, vice, deputy, distinguished, senior, executive, interim, etc., etc.

I look at all these ridiculous job-title diminutives every year, and I still can’t figure out who ranks higher in the academic hackerama — a vice chancellor, an executive vice chancellor, or a deputy executive vice chancellor?

Some esteemed scholar or practitioner should do a monograph on that subject — a qualitative phenomenological study, as it were.

Do you think I’m qualified? You’re kidding, right? It’s ZooMass — nobody from Massachusetts need apply.

Entire UMass payroll at bostonherald.com.