UNC's academic scandal

[canderson]

The Tar Heels appear to have something of a major and growing problem on their hands. Turns out, at least according to several recent investigations and reports, UNC has all but admitted it has covered up an academic scandal that appears to be far-reaching in scope.

UNC's own internal investigation revealed the school has been offering 54 courses that were apparently set up specifically for athletes and were bogus classes that required no attendance, taught by African-American studies professor Julius Nyang'oro.

The kicker with this is it's immediately after Mark Emmert's stand against PSU's "culture of athletics" and how that culture rode roughshod over academics, doing the right thing, etc. One could argue UNC might be enthralled in something that's not any different in theory. So, what happens from here?

The Raleigh News & Observer has been doing a good job with their own investigative reporting, and yesterday published a fairly damning commentary that Julius Peppers' fraudulent duplicate transcript might be just the tip of the iceberg. From that story:

A transcript bearing Peppers’ name, found over the weekend in an odd portal on a UNC website, shows a subpar academic record: a 1.82 grade point average and 11 grades of D or F. It also suggests that the academic fraud already confirmed by the university in the African studies department goes much further back than it had previously been able to confirm.




Peppers’ transcript, and a second one that practically mirrors it, show he received grades of B or better in seven classes within the department, offerings found in later years to be academically suspect. Without those grades, it’s unlikely Peppers would have kept his GPA high enough to play sports. UNC records show Nyang’oro taught or supervised at least three of those classes.

A UNC faculty committee investigated UNC's own claim and has asked for more independent investigations.

A report by a special faculty committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is calling for an independent commission of outside experts in higher education to review athletics and academics at the university.

The report, released Thursday, also states staffers in the school's Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes referred players to classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM). In May, the university outlined fraud and poor oversight in 54 AFAM classes between 2007 and 2011, including classes that met irregularly if at all.

That included a class last summer with 18 current football players and one former player.

Despite all these things, the NCAA hasn't said much at all about UNC and the academic scandal, and has implied it doesn't have any immediate plans to investigate.

Matt Haynes over at Sporting News has a pretty good read on this whole situation regarding Mark Emmert and the NCAA.

When Mark Emmert made his grandiose statement last month, when he stood up and showed everyone at Penn State and intercollegiate athletics who was boss, you just knew this day was coming.

As fate would have it, it’s worse than anything Mr. Big Stick could have imagined.

“This,” one BCS athletic director told me Monday, “is Pandora’s Box.”

And an ironic kick in the rear for the man who talked tough while his kingdom was crumbling around him. Guess what, Mr. Emmert?

You’re gonna need a bigger stick.

Anyone have any thoughts on what the NCAA should do here?

 

[collings94]

How could the NCAA miss this during the two year investigation? This just proves how corrupt college sports really is. I like Haynes calling it Pandora's Box, because it really is. Until proven otherwise, I believe that stuff like this happens in 90% of the big time sports programs.

The NCAA will probably do nothing, but if this was say, Marshall, that was doing this, they would already have the axed raised.

It's really up too ESPN and the media to MAKE the NCAA do something. If they cover it and exploit it with 1/10th of the way they coverd the Penn St. scandals then the NCAA will have no choice but to take away scholarships and ban them from post-season play.

 

[DukeSox]

the NCAA will have no choice but to take away scholarships championships

Damn right there were basketball players taking those classes in '05 and '09

 

[SouthernBoSox]

Doesn't every university have these "bullshit" classes? I had classes where I showed up 3 times, had a stupid ass study guide or slides, would rock the tests, and get the easiest A possible. It's a general rule when you walk into class the first day and see 20 athletes that you're going to get an A.

I know I tried to get in as many of them as possible.

I guess these were legitimate "doing absolutely nothing" classes that were segregated from the normal school population?
All schools have ways of making academics extremely easy for athletes, but this is a little further down the road of cheating.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

I really don't understand why colleges don't offer degrees geared towards becoming a professional athlete. Just like anything else, if I want to become a professional chemist or engineer, I take a degree path towards that goal. Most of these students know they want to become professional athletes and should be given the option to work towards a degree that teaches them how to do that. Making these guys take some bogus degree path that they will never use sort of perpetuates this problem, doesn't it? Sports are a profession, just like anything else, why not offer degrees for that profession.

 

[AMS25]

Doesn't every university have these "bullshit" classes? I had classes where I showed up 3 times, had a stupid ass study guide or slides, would rock the tests, and get the easiest A possible. It's a general rule when you walk into class the first day and see 20 athletes that you're going to get an A.

I know I tried to get in as many of them as possible.

I guess these were legitimate "doing absolutely nothing" classes that were segregated from the normal school population?
All schools have ways of making academics extremely easy for athletes, but this is a little further down the road of cheating.

I've been teaching for 15+ years at a university where athletics are deemed very important (Oklahoma). I have had several athletes in my classes, and don't treat them any differently than the other students. Of course, many of the less-prepared athletes drop my classes when they realize how much reading and writing is involved. But, some hang on and do OK. I do think it is easier for some of these students to take majors (like Sociology and Psychology) where the number of majors is such that the professors rely more heavily on multiple choice tests than I do.

The university does take some steps to preserve academic integrity. The university employs a "classroom-checker" to make sure that students attend class. I also get several emails a semester, asking me how the athletes are doing in class and whether they would benefit from tutoring/extra help.

 

[Nator]

It's really up too ESPN and the media to MAKE the NCAA do something. If they cover it and exploit it with 1/10th of the way they coverd the Penn St. scandals then the NCAA will have no choice but to take away scholarships and ban them from post-season play.

There is absolutely no way ESPN will do anything about this until they get dragged into it kicking and screaming when the noise from independent sources is deafening.

They are likely engaged in an emergency conference call lead by Dick Vitale on how manage this story going forward.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

I really don't understand why colleges don't offer degrees geared towards becoming a professional athlete. Just like anything else, if I want to become a professional chemist or engineer, I take a degree path towards that goal. Most of these students know they want to become professional athletes and should be given the option to work towards a degree that teaches them how to do that. Making these guys take some bogus degree path that they will never use sort of perpetuates this problem, doesn't it? Sports are a profession, just like anything else, why not offer degrees for that profession.

I agree with this, with the adjustment that sport isn't just a profession, it is an industry with many career opportunities beyond just being an athlete. Many of those who are successful in being athletes, wind up working in their sport long after playing days are over anyway. A true student of sport is a well-rounded, knowlegeable person - just as a true student of anything is. I would suggest that the program that granted degrees in sport would be similar to those that grant degrees in the Fine Arts. Is an athlete less worthy of a degree in his or her field than a cellist is in music, or a thespian in drama? A good athlete needs to know a lot of things; biology, statistics, economics, history, geography, political science, psychology, communications...why not craft a degree program that incorporates those things?

I'd also suggest that a certain number of opportunites in those degrees would go to non-players...just like any other degree program.

 

[Captaincoop]

I agree with this, with the adjustment that sport isn't just a profession, it is an industry with many career opportunities beyond just being an athlete. Many of those who are successful in being athletes, wind up working in their sport long after playing days are over anyway. A true student of sport is a well-rounded, knowlegeable person - just as a true student of anything is. I would suggest that the program that granted degrees in sport would be similar to those that grant degrees in the Fine Arts. Is an athlete less worthy of a degree in his or her field than a cellist is in music, or a thespian in drama? A good athlete needs to know a lot of things; biology, statistics, economics, history, geography, political science, psychology, communications...why not craft a degree program that incorporates those things?

I'd also suggest that a certain number of opportunites in those degrees would go to non-players...just like any other degree program.

The vast, vast, vast majority of student-athletes are aware from day one that they are not going to be playing professionally in their sport. They need to come away from college with the same tools to succeed that anyone else does.

I think we forget sometimes that when you talk about NCAA athletes - we're not just talking about basketball players at North Carolina. There are 340 or so schools in Division I, and there are 30-something sports sponsored at that level across those schools. About 320 of those schools would be appalled by the idea of creating special academic programs for student-athletes, since 99% of those athletes would not be able to do anything with a degree like that after graduation.

Yes, the NCAA is the most hypocritical organization on Earth* (*non-politics division), but even the NCAA has some limits.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

The vast, vast, vast majority of student-athletes are aware from day one that they are not going to be playing professionally in their sport. They need to come away from college with the same tools to succeed that anyone else does.

I think we forget sometimes that when you talk about NCAA athletes - we're not just talking about basketball players at North Carolina. There are 340 or so schools in Division I, and there are 30-something sports sponsored at that level across those schools. About 320 of those schools would be appalled by the idea of creating special academic programs for student-athletes, since 99% of those athletes would not be able to do anything with a degree like that after graduation.

Yes, the NCAA is the most hypocritical organization on Earth* (*non-politics division), but even the NCAA has some limits.

What do you mean by "not do anything with a degree like that"? There is a huge industry in sport, and as many job opportunities in sport as there are in many other fields. Each and every one of those schools themselves has an athletics department, and need coaches, trainers, administrators, facility operators. The media is full of opportunities for athletes. Youth sports programs have a dire need for well-rounded, well educated operators who are actually able to run their businesses and not-for-profits in a competent manner. Beyond all that, the professional sports industy features not only 30 or so major professional organizations in four high profile sports, but a further huge number of minor and independent league teams.

I'll go back to this, what's so less academically noble about the study and performance of athletics than there is about the study and performance of the Fine Arts?

 

[FL4WL3SS]

Because like 0.01% of college athletes become professional athletes. Colleges need to continue to try to prepare them for a life where a 40 yard dash time doesn't matter.

And what percentage of engineering students actually go on to become engineers? That's a decision that the individual needs to make, it's a risk just like any other decision. I don't really see why there should be an exception made in this case. Offer it up at least and let the individual make the decision.

EDIT: I'd also like to add that not all ahtletes may choose to partake in the degree program for whatever reason, but at least give them the option. It's a huge industry, and like Fred not Lynn says, there are so many more jobs in the sports world than just being a professional athlete.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

I agree with this, with the adjustment that sport isn't just a profession, it is an industry with many career opportunities beyond just being an athlete. Many of those who are successful in being athletes, wind up working in their sport long after playing days are over anyway. A true student of sport is a well-rounded, knowlegeable person - just as a true student of anything is. I would suggest that the program that granted degrees in sport would be similar to those that grant degrees in the Fine Arts. Is an athlete less worthy of a degree in his or her field than a cellist is in music, or a thespian in drama? A good athlete needs to know a lot of things; biology, statistics, economics, history, geography, political science, psychology, communications...why not craft a degree program that incorporates those things?

I'd also suggest that a certain number of opportunites in those degrees would go to non-players...just like any other degree program.

Great post.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

Well..the fundamental problem in basketball and football is that you've got a system in which the road to the pros still more or less has a mandatory route through college. You've got players in those sports who might not have chosen college otherwise, and who may not truly belong there - even if there were "basketball" and "football" degrees.

 

[teddykgb]

Can we chill out on the Penn State comparisons? Not every slope needs to be slippery. These things are only related insofar as they both involve college athletics.

As far as the propsect of an Athletics degree, sure, why not, But you can't only offer it to athletes, and it might actually harm your general populace to offer it to everyone, like those generally useless "Sports Management" degrees that cause immature 18 year olds to choose a career path they can't deliver on. Maybe it's not different from some of the other "useless" degrees offered, but if you make the program easy enough that athletes would take it and have such a beloved topic as sports as the major subject, I think you might just churn out a billion graduates with this degree and how the hell do they all find jobs in a field that is already nearly impossible to break into?

But really, it all comes down to difficulty. The students are taking the classes they're taking because they're 18-21 year olds who have a significant time commitment and don't really care about much more than maintaining a GPA that allows them to compete. If you had this degree available, the ones who would excel in it are likely the ones who are already excelling in other degree programs, so to really hash out whether this is a good idea you'd have to identify how many kids are currently doing poorly because the topic they're forced to major in just doesn't interest them. I find it hard to believe that there would be very many.

Coming back to the original story, this is obviously an egregious extension of a longstanding policy that many college students adopt, which is to find the easiest classes and take those. I don't know how much the NCAA needs to be involved in jurisdiction on that topic, it's just kind of a weird thing that goes on everywhere. Obviously it's a big deal if they created classes and didn't let other students take them, making this a way for athletes to artificially keep a GPA they couldn't otherwise maintain. If these classes were available to everyone, then UNC really just cheapened their degree and cost all of their alums some credibility in the name of athletic progress, and the NCAA maybe should intervene at that point.

 

[AMS25]

teddkgb makes a good point that some universities already offer "Sports Management" degrees. My university offers a degree in "Health and Exercise Science." Plus, there are always those who get Education degrees with a concentration in PE. Finally, many schools already allow students to design their own "interdisciplinary degrees." There is nothing stopping an athlete from putting together a degree that borrows from a number of disciplines to meet his/her academic needs. But, that assumes that athletes have really thought through their academic goals.

 

[Captaincoop]

What do you mean by "not do anything with a degree like that"? There is a huge industry in sport, and as many job opportunities in sport as there are in many other fields. Each and every one of those schools themselves has an athletics department, and need coaches, trainers, administrators, facility operators. The media is full of opportunities for athletes. Youth sports programs have a dire need for well-rounded, well educated operators who are actually able to run their businesses and not-for-profits in a competent manner. Beyond all that, the professional sports industy features not only 30 or so major professional organizations in four high profile sports, but a further huge number of minor and independent league teams.

I'll go back to this, what's so less academically noble about the study and performance of athletics than there is about the study and performance of the Fine Arts?

There are plenty of schools that already offer legitimate sports management or PE/kinisiology degrees. Are you talking about something beyond that?

 

[lostjumper]

I understand what Teddykgb and other's are saying, however I think they've missed the point. The point is there was allegedly a large cover-up in order to protect the basketball and other sports programs. The NCAA has painted themselves into a corner with the Penn State case by stepping in and hammering them for a cover-up to protect the football program. If the NCAA does nothing here, it shows them as being giant hypocrites.

*This is not equating child rape to academic fraud. This is equating a cover-up to a cover-up.

 

[teddykgb]

I understand what Teddykgb and other's are saying, however I think they've missed the point. The point is there was allegedly a large cover-up in order to protect the basketball and other sports programs. The NCAA has painted themselves into a corner with the Penn State case by stepping in and hammering them for a cover-up to protect the football program. If the NCAA does nothing here, it shows them as being giant hypocrites.

*This is not equating child rape to academic fraud. This is equating a cover-up to a cover-up.

All coverups need not be created equal, hence my comments about slopes not needing to be slippery. Just because one situation warranted punishment A doesn't mean that all situations that are similar in some way to that first situation must warrant the same punishment. It's great to want to play a trump card on the NCAA, but the reality is that the NCAA was very transparent about the PSU scandal being an outlier and being handled as such, so even they seem to intend to mark that situation as something out of the ordinary and not how they plan to do business going forward, which makes complete sense because that case was so completely out of the ordinary and required a bit of special attention.

Whatever happened at UNC, as you say, will not be in any way close to child rape. But equivocating the cover ups is just as bad. Part of the reason why the PSU thing was so incredibly fucked up that it required some special attention was that the cover up undoubtedly caused more kids to be raped. So, yes, they both had a type of cover up going on, but in one instance more kids had their lives completely shattered and more real life crimes were committed as a result, and at UNC some kids who didn't give a shit about their degrees were able to earn them so they could stay eligible for college football. This isn't just apples and oranges this is like apples and donkeys or some other completely ridiculous comparison.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

There are plenty of schools that already offer legitimate sports management or PE/kinisiology degrees. Are you talking about something beyond that?

I think you could create something more specific to sport, sort of a blended adaptation of those degrees - but yes, those sorts of degrees already exist, why not tweak them a little? In the end, you might come up with something a little more well rounded. Why not change a system where a coach tells a player what class to take because it is easy, to a system where a coach works with the department to design a series of classes a player takes because learning the material will benefit the player.

I think my main point is that sport can be a very noble and acceptable area of academic interest. There's sometimes a perception that sport is not an intellectual pursuit, that sport is the domain of the "dumb jock", and as an erstwhile athlete I disagree with that.

 

[Greg29fan]

UNC investigated the "academic fraud" on their own as part of the investigation into Coach Davis and into the football program, so they never covered anything up. I guess you could argue they should have known about it earlier, but they did investigate, found that it went back to 2007 (which would have included the 09 Basketball title), and turned those findings into the NCAA. If it goes back further then more investigating should be done. The initial reporting by the News & Observer last year showed it was much more a football issue than a basketball issue, but any basketball players involved could have serious reprecussions for the program. That said, I'm not ready to say banners need to come down or Coach Williams needs to resign like I've seen in the blogosphere today.

I'm not thrilled about any scandal at the university but I'm also not thrilled about the FERPA violation done in regards to Julius Peppers. How his transcript came to be posted on the Internet needs to be investigated, not just by UNC but by legal officials, and since it turned up on a NC State message board, whatever role that institution may or may not have played needs to be handled as well.

 

[Greg29fan]

I never said it was the worst part, but a FERPA violation is significant and needs to be handled appropriately, and it is part of the entire episode.

 

[Greg29fan]

The link to Julius's transcript was posted on NC State's Rivals message board - I want to know how they came across it and what it was doing anywhere on the Internet to be viewed. If it was someone from UNC or from NC State that put it up, then find out who. Yes, it's way down the list but for the institution, that could be bad as well, given it violates federal law.

FWIW, Roy Williams did comment on the AFAM scandal back in June - http://blogs.newsobserver.com/uncnow/unc-coach-roy-williams-on-afam-controversy-it%E2%80%99s-not-a-basketball-issue

 

[Jinhocho]

A couple things:

1) If they look all the way back to Peppers and vacate wins, that will mean the basketball team will vacate them as well.

2) I hope this costs Holden Thorpe his job. He has cloaked himself as MR UNC. He defended Davis till the academic component starting coming out and then dumped him so fast it made heads spin while stating they had to protect the academic integrity of UNC.

3) This lets everyone know this all began long before Butch Davis. Personally, living less than 5 miles from UNC and having a wife who is on faculty there, I have been stunned by the way they have handled this and the school has basically cut of people left and right in an attempt to stem the bleeding. This starts to indicate why - it goes way way way back. I find it really hard to believe no one knew this to date after they began their look back. They tried to lay it on Davis and say we made the mistake of going for big time football and have seen the light.

4) The idea that a department could get away with this is ridiculous - especially for so long. Syllabi for each course, each semester are filed with the Deans office. They are part of assessment packages where outside agencies come in to evaluate the school. The courses taught and the course load serve as the basis for position requests. UNC has basically been stiffing its primarily AA majors of a huge part of their education AND people there have used it as a means of keeping athletes eligible for over a decade now. That, to me, is as bad as it gets in the world of the university and the scholar athlete. I have a feeling there HAS to be a lot more there. I know Andy Curliss the N&O's investigative reporter and he has been on this for a long time and so has Dan Kane who I sorta know and is another great reporter. This will come out and I am certain there is more.

5) About the transcript - I bet it was someone leaking it.

6) UNC has done its own investigation, but they limited the dates and obviously did not look deeply enough. The N&O and Pack fans uncovered the plagiarism on a paper that had been cleared by UNC, UNC double downed on it, and then ate crow when the N&O posted side by sides of the plagiarism. They did not look back far enough and they did not dig deep enough. They just made it look like it was ALL the Butch Davis era and a few bad seeds when you had academic fraud occuring in a department, by a department chair, and not investigated diligently enough by Deans, the Provost or the chancellor.

7) The rumble on campus was the old AD resigned and part of it was his staff in the AD kept their jobs. I think this all has to go back to a full house cleaning of the Athletic Department staff management, compliance folks, people who oversaw the tutoring program, and anyone they can find in advising who was steering these kids to courses in the AAS department.

8) There is a sizeable portion of faculty on campus who want to kill the football program and are just FURIOUS about what this is doing to the academic reputation of UNC. I snicker at their chances of doing that, but I do not think that the faculty will be bought out with Thorpe's assurances any longer. He had a lot of goodwill as a UNC grad, faculty member, dean etc = he is/was viewed by the faculty as one of their own. I think and hope that goes out the window now. This investigation NEEDS to be as thorough and as wide as possible because it has gone beyond a simple football scandal. It is not an academic scandal at one of the nation's premier public institutions.

 

[mauf]

I never said it was the worst part, but a FERPA violation is significant and needs to be handled appropriately, and it is part of the entire episode.

Stick to your guns.

I think the PSU comparisons are silly, but if folks want to go there, I'll throw out one -- the presence of self-righteous people who think that following NCAA rules is more important than obeying the law of the land and not hurting other people. Seriously, although it's obviously not on par with child rape, I'm shocked that anyone will defend or minimize the release of Peppers's transcript in violation of federal law.

 

[Jinhocho]

Last month, just as a special UNC Board of Governors panel began its review of academic fraud at UNC-Chapel Hill, Chancellor Holden Thorp promised full cooperation with it and with others trying to learn what went wrong.
“We welcome the involvement of the Board of Governors panel, our trustees, our faculty and others who care about the university,” Thorp said.
Yet the university has shown little interest in digging into two separate matters brought to its attention by The News & Observer that could show that the scandal involving no-show classes goes back several years beyond what the university has confirmed.
Nearly a year ago, as the problems were starting to emerge, The N&O asked questions about a fall 2005 class offered by Julius Nyang’oro, the longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department, that may never have been held.
Two weeks ago, The N&O, seeking information about the class, gave the university the name of a former student in that class and offered emails from that person backing up his claim that the class did not meet.
Nancy Davis, a university spokeswoman, repeatedly said officials would not investigate unless the former student came to them. But late Friday afternoon, she revised the university’s position in an email that said: “The former student’s experience was consistent with the patterns we identified in our review.” She declined to provide further explanation.
Two months ago, a reporter showed university officials what is characterized on UNC-CH’s website as a “test transcript” developed to help students and advisers use a computer program that tells them what courses a student still needs to graduate. The test transcript, which dates back to 2001, has several characteristics that are consistent with the issues raised by the academic scandal.
UNC officials say it is a made-up transcript, but they have declined to look at records to be certain the transcript was not lifted in whole or in part from a real student’s academic record.
The lack of investigation into these and other matters raises questions about whether the university is seeking information beyond what it has already reported: 54 classes within the department in which there was little or no instruction, from 2007 to 2011, and dozens of independent studies during that period in which there’s little evidence of supervision of the work students were asked to perform.
Jay Smith, a UNC history professor and one of the leading voices for a deeper investigation, said the university should be digging into both matters because they may shed more light on how long the academic fraud took place and who was intended to benefit from it.
“My sense of it, and it’s only a sense,” he said, “is that they really want to keep this episode to the Butch Davis era, and conveniently also confined to the football team.”
Davis is the former football coach hired in 2006 to rebuild the program. He was fired after an NCAA investigation launched two years ago that found players had received improper benefits from agents and their go-betweens, and improper help from a tutor.
That investigation did not uncover the academic fraud within the African studies department. Davis, who was fired last year without cause and paid the remaining $2.7 million on his contract, has said through his attorney that he knew nothing about the no-show classes and did not know Nyang’oro.
‘Come see me’
The fall 2005 class shows such classes were being offered a year before Davis arrived and before the buildup of the football program that eventually got it in trouble with the NCAA.
The former student was not an athlete. He asked not to be identified in a news story because he did not want to make trouble for the university, but he provided emails that show he enrolled in the class because it was originally listed in registration records with a Friday afternoon time, which fit his schedule.
But he later discovered there was no class time or classroom listed, so he emailed Nyang’oro.
“You need to come see me,” Nyang’oro replied in an email. He gave the student his office location.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/08/10/v-print/2262045/unc-reluctant-to-dig-deeper-on.html

There is more..

Anyway, I think this dooms the chancellor.

 

[DLew On Roids]

Because like 0.01% of college athletes become professional athletes.

So then why are there graduate programs in English Literature?

 

[DukeSox]

How many Eng Lit majors go on to write Eng Lit?

Anyway, shits gettin real at the Dump on the Hump. http://m.espn.go.com/wireless/story?storyId=8275928

 

[bowiac]

I bet a lot of them go on to teach it. This analogy just doesn't work for me. A professional athlete curriculum would be a joke and it'd be nearly impossible to implement anyways. Might as well just let them take other joke majors, like Communications or something.

At it's core, this issue is the same issue as pay for play scandals. The issue is that a large portion of players at D1 schools aren't there for an education - they're there to play football. Making someone who doesn't give a shit major in English lit won't make them learn something about English lit. It'll either get them to drop out, or get them to find a way to fake it. You can't make someone learn something they don't want to learn.

 

[mauf]

So, are you suggesting that schools should create curriculums to cater to the 1% of athletes who go on to play professionally for what probably averages out to 3-4 years or something like that? That doesn't make a lick of sense to me. I get your point that a lot of athletes don't go to college to actually learn. But they're 18 year-old kids and 18 year-old kids are fucking stupid and impressionable. If anything, more needs to be done to get them to take their studies more seriously. I'd rather see these kids get a "fake" degree than no degree at all. In addition, a lot of them end up coaching in their respective sports. And most schools won't hire someone without a college degree. They need a degree of some sort, even if it's a crappy major at some crappy SEC school.

What 18 year old goes to college to learn? I went because my parents expected it, and because it seemed like a good place to party and get laid.

I was academically well-prepared for college, and I only had to work if I wanted extra spending money, so getting a liberal arts degree was easy. If I was ill-prepared and had to work 30 hours a week to pay my way, that would've been a different story. That's basically the situation a majority of big-time college football and basketball players find themselves in. (The athletic scholarship is paying their tuition and living expenses, so it's more like a job than an extracurricular activity.) They're not going to survive in college without help that other kids don't get. The question, then, is when "help" crosses the line into academic fraud.

My understanding is that most schools with big-time sports programs have an unspoken deal with certain profs where any athlete who shows up to class and does the required work is pretty much guaranteed to receive no worse than a C. The difference between that common practice and what happened at UNC is a difference in degree, not in kind. So while UNC obviously crossed the line into fraud, I think this story is less exceptional than it's being made out to be.

The reason this is such a big story is because of what D-Lew alludes to upthread -- UNC has always prided itself about being on the side of the angels when it comes to stuff like this.

 

[Jinhocho]

To me the UNC scandal (now) is less about athletics and more about a pretty big academic scandal in the African American studies department. What makes it worse is I think that UNC has worked real hard to keep the focus on football and Butch Davis since they found this. It is not pretty at all.

 

[mauf]

I don't disagree with any of this. But it doesn't touch what I was responding to: specifically, that schools should create curriculums geared towards professional athletes. I think that's pointless since the vast majority of them won't play professionally and they're not likely to apply themselves in the classroom regardless of the subject matter.

I know. I ended up using your post as a jumping-off point for something else.

To your original point, I think college is what you make of it for the most part, so I'd have no problem with an aspiring pro athlete (or any other student for that matter) designing a course of study around his particular interests. And you're right about students who don't give a shit -- if you're only interested in doing what's necessary to stay eligible (show up for class, and do a half-assed job on required assignments), you're probably going to want to hide in a giant lecture hall, which a mainstream liberal arts major generally affords (if you pick your classes correctly), rather than taking the small classes that would be prevalent in a specialized major like "sports studies" or whatever.

 

[bowiac]

I wasn't advocating a professional athlete major. I was saying that worrying that too many athletes are majoring in general studies is silly, since herding them into real majors won't do much for them there either.

 

[SuperManny]

The NCAA is at least consistent about being inconsistent.

NCAA rules not broken, UNC says

The NCAA has told University of North Carolina officials that the university apparently did not break NCAA rules in the scandal surrounding the school's Afro and African-American Studies Department, according to a statement released by the school Friday.

North Carolina, which first notified the NCAA that it had identified potential academic issues involving student-athletes in AFAM courses a year ago, updated the NCAA enforcement staff on Aug. 23 about the situation.

"The NCAA staff reaffirmed to university officials that no NCAA rules appeared to have been broken," the school said in its statement.

In May, UNC made public an internal probe that found 54 AFAM classes were either "aberrant" or "irregularly" taught from summer 2007 to summer 2011. That included unauthorized grade changes, forged faculty signatures on grade rolls, and limited or no class time.

UNC has said that no student received a grade without submitting written work. But more than 50 percent of the students in those suspect classes were athletes. As first reported by The News & Observer of Raleigh, one class last summer had an enrollment of 19 -- 18 football players and one former football player.

 

[Jinhocho]

Holden Thorpe is stepping down as chancellor at UNC.

http://www.unc.edu/campus-updates/Thorp-announces-plans-to-step-down

 

[MentalDisabldLst]

Bumping this thread for some historical perspective, as I had forgotten that the present uproar over UNC's academic bullshit theater actually had its roots in a story that has been going on for a year and a half.

 

[DukeSox]

Yep, they've drawn it out so long (denials, admissions, rebuttals, "investigations", "working with the NCAA", etc.) that it's become an undercurrent that occasionally bubbles up, but they've kept things so confusing that no one really bothers to pay attention

 

[DukeSox]

Yep, no bball players involved in the fake black studies department, nothing to see here....
 
 

 

[DukeSox]

Give up the ill-gained titles

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/28/3662739/unc-professor-calls-on-tar-heels.html

 

[DukeSox]

HBO

http://www.hbo.com/real-sports-with-bryant-gumbel#/real-sports-with-bryant-gumbel/episodes/0/204-episode/video/204-higher-education.html/eNrjcmbO0CzLTEnNd8xLzKksyUx2zs8rSa0oYc5Xz89JgQkGJKan+iXmpjIXsjFyMjKyMbJJJ5aW5BfkJFbalhSVpgIAV3AXOA==

 

[canderson]

Fuck the ncaa for ignoring this.

 

[Greg29fan]

The NCAA investigated it and found no violations.  Is there something that's not getting through about that?  It's been hashed and re-hashed.  It wasn't ignored; it hasn't been ignored by anybody in a position of power at the NCAA level or the new UNC administration.  Hell, there's another independent investigation going on now AFTER the Martin investigation.
 

 

[canderson]

The NCAA investigated it and found no violations.  Is there something that's not getting through about that?  It's been hashed and re-hashed.  It wasn't ignored; it hasn't been ignored by anybody in a position of power at the NCAA level or the new UNC administration.  Hell, there's another independent investigation going on now AFTER the Martin investigation.

I simply don't believe the ncaa's investigation. I have nothing against UNC, at all. It's about the ncaa's own policies.

 

[DukeSox]

The NCAA investigated it and found no violations.  Is there something that's not getting through about that?  It's been hashed and re-hashed.  It wasn't ignored; it hasn't been ignored by anybody in a position of power at the NCAA level or the new UNC administration.  Hell, there's another independent investigation going on now AFTER the Martin investigation.
 

Did they actually investigate the fake classes and all the athletes with AfAm majors all of a sudden?
 
The NCAA did an investigation BEFORE all this other stuff came to light.

 

[Greg29fan]

The NCAA completed their investigation on March 12, 2012.  And they did investigate the AFAM department, as outlined in this e-mail exchange.
 
http://www.tarheelblog.com/2013/11/12/5095308/unc-out-of-the-woods-with-ncaa-on-academic-issues

 

[Fishercat]

This is an A- final paper:
 

 

[Average Reds]

I'm as jaded as they come and prepared to believe anything, but it would be nice if you could back it up with something more than a picture which does not support your contention.

 

[Dan Murfman]

I'm as jaded as they come and prepared to believe anything, but it would be nice if you could back it up with something more than a picture which does not support your contention

Still not proof positive but a link from the Sporting News
 
http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2014-03-26/unc-academic-scandal-term-paper-rosa-parks-african-american-studies-afam41-niang-oro-north-carolina-mary-willingham

 

[Grin&MartyBarret]

Unfortunately, the student responsible forgot to put his name on the paper and never received credit for his work.

 

[Average Reds]

Still not proof positive but a link from the Sporting News
 
http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2014-03-26/unc-academic-scandal-term-paper-rosa-parks-african-american-studies-afam41-niang-oro-north-carolina-mary-willingham

 
Agree - not proof of anything, but at least there's an attribution.

 

[SuperManny]

ESPN segment
 
UNC Academic Scandal: Whistleblower, Former Athlete Speak Out