As to the /32 - well it has to default to something. So it could be either a non viable option like select me I guess, or some other mask. What do you feel should be the default mask? /24 - while that might be common on a lan side interface, normally that wouldn't be correct for a static wan.. I would guess something smaller for a common public IP range.
When setting a static IP it would seem realistic to expect the person setting it to validate they are are indeed setting the correct mask for their use ;)
Glad you got it sorted.. I would assume you can query your campus ntp via unicast as well, and not just rely on broadcast. I don't see a way in the gui to select broadcastclient mode.. Guess it would always be viable to edit the ntp conf directly vs using the gui, but this is normally not a good idea. Such edits don't normally survive service restarts unless you edit the actual pfsense files that start and stop the services - which these do not survive updates to pfsense, etc.
Would seem odd they would only provide broadcast as a means of sync to ntp.