According to businessweek.com:
The University of North Carolina on Wednesday admitted its academic-fraud-for-athletes scandal was worse than the public has previously been told. That’s saying something. After all, the practice at Chapel Hill of steering football and basketball players into fake classes had already made North Carolina the epicenter of a national debate about the corrupting effects of the $16 billion college athletics industry.
Several considerations regarding this widespread
1. The deceit was widespread and aimed at keeping athletes eligible. For years, UNC officials have resisted the obvious indications that academics were compromised to promote sports. That resistance has finally collapsed. The latest in a series of university-sponsored investigations revealed that over 18 years—from 1993 through 2011—some 3,100 students took “paper classes” with no faculty oversight and no actual class attendance. Almost half the students enrolled in the phony courses were athletes. Many of the basketball and football players “were directed to the classes by academic counselors” assigned to advise athletes, UNC said in a written statement. “These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible.”
In other words, to keep members of UNC’s top-rated basketball team on the court, professional “counselors” encouraged flat-out academic fraud.
2. Of all disciplines, it was black studies that hosted the fake classes. Kenneth Wainstein, the former federal prosecutor who led the latest investigation, found that the department formerly known as African & Afro-American Studies offered hundreds of “irregular classes.” Wainstein, now in private practice, said that two people formerly in the department—the ex-chairman, Julius Nyang’oro, and his top administrative aide, Deborah Crowder—oversaw the paper classes. “Various university personnel were aware of red flags,” UNC said, “yet did not ask questions. There was a failure of meaningful oversight by the university.”
3. UNC is sorry. “I apologize first to the students who entrusted us with their education and took these courses,” said UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt. “Mr. Wainstein has found that the wrongdoing at Carolina lasted much longer and affected more students than previously known. The bad actions of a few and the inaction of others failed the university’s students, faculty and alumni, and undermined the institution as a whole.” Folt, who became chancellor in in 2013, promised a variety of academic reforms and said that nine (unspecified) UNC employees would be fired or disciplined. “Others implicated in the [Wainstein] report include former university employees,” such as Nyang’oro and Crowder, the university said.
4. Questions remain. The National Collegiate Athletic Association is conducting a separate investigation. One hopes that with the skepticism of outsiders, the NCAA will address in more detail the role of top athletic officials and coaches—current and former—within a sports program that has won five national men’s basketball championships. How many members of UNC’s last championship team in 2009 took the no-show classes, and how many did they take? As a signal that academic integrity really outweighs sports accolades, should UNC consider taking down that 2009 championship banner? Has the message penetrated the school’s athletic department to the degree that highly valued athletes are no longer being steered into dubious classes that contribute little to the education they’re owed?
Wainstein didn’t find wrongdoing outside the black studies department. “No current coaches were involved or aware,” the university added.
The corruption of African American studies is particularly offensive, as UNC’s elite athletic ranks are disproportionately African American: black students, many of them from modest economic backgrounds, who provide athletic services in exchange for the promise of a college education. That’s supposed to be a real education, not one built on no-show classes.
This is a horrible state of affairs. UNC is a primo school. It has a reputation for academic excellence as well as a tremendous athletic program. Why on earth did this happen?
What will the NCAA do about it? Will there be sanctions? Part of me wants every trophy ever won during the time period to be taken back. Some of the players weren’t eligible.
The NCAA came down on Penn State like a ton of bricks. Its time for them to act on this situation. Over 3000 students took fake classes. that is simply unacceptable and gave them an edge the other teams in the ACC simply didn’t have.
If you had to pick a university where this was likely going on, UNC would have been way down the list (at least to a casual observer of these things looking at it from the outside). The University has an excellent academic reputation and is very competitive overall in its admissions. If things are as bad as initial reports indicate, however, I would think UNC would be a good candidate for a multi-year suspension of all its sports that were feeding off this kind of fraud.
Yes, Scout, I would think UNC would be way down the list of schools involved in this kind of cheating. I could put 100 in front of it without batting an eye.
I do think there have to be some serious sanctions on UNC. While I do think the NCAA was far too heavy handed with Penn State, doing some things I didn’t think were in their purview, if they do to one, they need to do to another.
@Scout
If you had to pick a university where this was likely going on, UNC would have been at the top the list (at least to an casual of these things looking at it from the inside). Things were not much different back in the day at many “prestigious” ACC schools including one near and dear to my heart that actually recruited athletes who scored 450 on their SAT, despite its touted admissions requirements.
But that school near and dear to your heart didn’t hold fake classes for student athletes.
My brother had a roommate his freshman year that got into that same dear and dear school with a combined 800 on his SATs. That had nothing to do with athletics. It was all about affirmative action.
Then why have SATs. No one will meet with success at that school with scores that low.
Reading the whole article, I was astounded about the fact that actually LESS
than 50% of students involved, were arthletes.
Why were the others in there? Did they legitimatize the class or what?
Can’t find the article just now, but the “fake” grades had to do with
students being able to hold on to grants and/or scholarships. One
class was Swahili 3, THAT I remember. Was in today’s Washpost.
Interesting because swaheli isn’t a written language.
@Moon-howler
Come on “Bice Psych” and Mental Health were almost the same thing, not to mention History of Jazz or Slavic Folklore and the unforgettable “Rocks for Jocks” classes.
I want to take rocks for jocks.