Now, it's definitely a problem for society that people who want to spend their lives engaging in academic debate, which is a thing we should encourage, can rarely find a job that supports them in doing so, and the closest they can find is providing vocational training to 20-year-olds who are ready to leave the academy once they've received the service they've paid for. But it doesn't really help either the professor or the student to pretend that the modern undergraduate classroom is anything else.
This decision doesn't even make sense from the perspective of vocational training. Being able to hear 那个 without great pain and upset is a directly job-applicable communication tool - there are many jobs working with Mandarin speakers that students won't be able to handle if the word traumatizes them.