UNC's academic scandal
- Thread starter canderson
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It is a bizarre comparison. On one hand you have an administration cooperating with athletes to award eligibility and degrees using fake classes, and coaches look the other way. On the other hand, you had coaches looking the other way when another coach raped children, and athletes and the administration were not involved.
The UNC case calls into question the legitimacy of all of their sports teams over a 20-year period. It is likely the largest case of systemic academic fraud in modern US history.
The PSU case doesn't have anything to do with the product on the field, but involved absolutely despicable behavior. The perpetrator is deservedly in prison, hopefully for good. The person primarily responsible for failing to report or stop this behavior died before prosecutors could make a case against him.
The only similarity between the cases is that it's extremely likely the NCAA will fuck up the UNC case as badly as it fucked up the PSU case.
The UNC case calls into question the legitimacy of all of their sports teams over a 20-year period. It is likely the largest case of systemic academic fraud in modern US history.
The PSU case doesn't have anything to do with the product on the field, but involved absolutely despicable behavior. The perpetrator is deservedly in prison, hopefully for good. The person primarily responsible for failing to report or stop this behavior died before prosecutors could make a case against him.
The only similarity between the cases is that it's extremely likely the NCAA will fuck up the UNC case as badly as it fucked up the PSU case.
DrewDawg said:
Infield Infidel said:
Yeah, it was just the guy who has a picture of a statuatory rapist as his profile picture that thought you were being too flippant about sexual abuse.
This is a great take and one I share.Chemistry Schmemistry said:
UNC's got a potentially bigger problem in accredition issue. This rampant fraud is something the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges likely can't easily step away from as they did in 2013 for UNC.
The NCAA will certainly fuck it up; not so sure the more overall important to the university accrediting agency will.
canderson said:
Given the fact that the choices in front of the accreditation board are to enact a toothless penalty that will have no impact or to essentially put the flagship university of the state of North Carolina out of business, I'm going to go on record and say that they can easily step away from this one.
This was a sophisticated scheme designed to keep athletes eligible across all sports. The "sophistication" comes from the fact that the scheme was explicitly laundered to provide plausible deniability. ("The classes were open to all students so it's not an athletic scandal.") Once discovered, the university pulled the ripcord on the plan and claimed it was academic fraud committed by a small group of people for reasons that defy explanation.
The accreditation board will cling to the fact that this is an athletic scandal to avoid bringing down the hammer. The NCAA will cling to the fact that it was academic fraud for the same reason.
Watching the charade play out will be like watching two murders point at each other as the trigger man as a way to claim reasonable doubt.
Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education calls for UNC to lose its accreditation.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/10/24/unc-chapel-hill-should-lose-accreditation/
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/10/24/unc-chapel-hill-should-lose-accreditation/
DukeSox said:
Seems a little extreme/over reactive. Hit the athletic programs hard, but don't penalize alumni and current students who played/play by the rules. We're talking roughly 15-20 students per year that were engaged in this crap.
gryoung said:
3100 students over roughly 20 years is more like 150 students a year. So at any given period about 600 currently enrolled students, which is roughly 3% of the undergraduate student body. That is not an inconsequential portion of the undergraduate population to be receiving fundamentally fraudulent education.
They won't lose their accreditation for all sorts of reasons but this is a massive academic scandal and UNC should face serious sanctions, even if that hurts alumni and current students who "played by the rules."
I think the professor is saying that he has added students this late in the semester to other classes, not that he has filled this class with non-athletes. Late add/drop is a red flag for academic fraud, so it looks like he's covering his bases there.DukeSox said:Discussion of adding "real" students to the classes to keep it legit:
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Yup - your math is correct, thanks for the catch. I still disagree with the broad-brush impact that comes with your position. In one form or another, this practice takes place in most of the "elite" athletic powers. These guys just happen to get caught.
gryoung said:
So the "others are doing it" defense? It has to stop somewhere.
In situations where there some major punishment, there are always going to be innocent victims---company CEO found committing fraud, everyone may lose their job. That shouldn't stop you from pursuing the guy.
gryoung said:
I'm not convinced that's the case. Of course a lot of schools find ways to make academics easy on their athletes. But this goes far beyond what we think of as "normal" practices in that respect and also impacted a huge number of non-athletes. There is a significant qualitative difference here between this scandal and any other academic scandal of which I'm aware.
gryoung said:
Your math is still way off. Hell, the report itself acknowledged that it's likely that far more than 3100 students were a part of the scam over the years. That was just the number they could prove right now.
As to your last point, even if you are right about other schools, how does that mitigate UNC's responsibility? I don't get a pass for speeding just because others are doing it.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Further, while in more recent years the classes were filled with both athletes and non-athletes (lots of frat guys), if you look at the data in the report, it shows in the early years of these "classes", there were only 2-3 people in each class and they were all athletes (largely basketball players).
As in, these classes really were started to keep marginal student-athletes eligible, and expanded over time when other students enrolled.
So it was an athletic/academic scandal from day 1 in 1993, not an academic-only scandal.
Lots of smoke that these classes were started after Duke won back to back in '91 and '92 (after having been dominant for a half decade), UNC basketball was losing recruits to up and coming teams, and Dean needed to figure out ways to get more marginally-academic recruits in the door and eligible. Here is a summary:
DukeSox said:
That "smoke" reads like it was quoted from a Duke fan blog and is just a bunch of conjecture about the character of various UNC players in the early 90s. The schadenfreude should be plenty. Trying to claim Duke as the cause of all of this seems pretty desperate.
Let's not conflate character with intelligence. There are high-character idiots and low-character 4.0s. I have no idea where UNC athletes fell on the character scale, but they clearly weren't by and large pulling 4.0s.
I disagree. I think the specific allegations carry far more weight in providing a justification for sanctions than the nebulous, general indictment of loss of institutional control. I see IC as a cherry on top or where the NCAA runs when it has no or poor evidence to issue punishment under its bylaws. The issuance of sanctions solely under IC reminds me of when my mother used to cite authority "because she said so."Average Reds said:
The NCAA has to bury UNC. The entire premise of its money making scheme is that the kids are getting an education. At UNC, they were not getting an education. They can't let UNC skate then turn around and try to hide behind their mission statement as to why they don't pay "student" athletes.
Forget the math.Average Reds said:
I don't have specific cases to support my statement, or the desire to research them, but anyone who thinks other big-name athletic programs aren't running under the radar with similiar activities is naive.
The sports department should take a big hit. A big hit.
I don't really care about UNC. Saying the NCAA or Grand Pubah of Higher Education Certification should napalm the school is easy.What bothers me is the inevitable broad-brush effect that would be fallout from a decertification.
Kids applying for a job (resume impact). Parents struggling to pay off student loans for their kids (emotional/psychological). Kids who worked their ass off in the real academic environment.
I don't expect my speeding to get a pass because others do it. I also don't expect to pay a penalty because someone in my neighborhood cheated on his taxes.
gryoung said:
I'm going to be charitable and assume you are having difficulty clearly articulating your point. I'm not trying to be condescending - we all do it on occasion - but there's a lot of nonsense here mixed in with solid points, and I'll try to see if I can address them.
Others may think that UNC should lose their accreditation. It's tempting to want this, but the reality is that would be a deeply unjust result because there will be way too many innocent victims paying the price for an out-of-control athletics department. The ironic part here is that by trying to launder an athletic scandal as an academic one, the university has placed itself in a position where it's legitimate to have serious conversations about their accreditation. (Oops.)
I don't think anyone doubts that every major university does things that are similar in nature. What distinguishes this scandal from run-of-the-mill efforts to keep athletes eligible is the scope, the timing (two decades) and the futile attempts to cover it up at the highest levels of the university.
Your last point is simply incoherent. You can't argue that what UNC does is similar to what other schools do and then argue that punishment for UNC is like being punished for doing something completely different.
It's perfectly coherent. All he is saying is you can create a metaphor for whichever side you're arguing for.Average Reds said:
gryoung said:
Average Reds said:
I didn't read his last point that way. I read it to mean that UNC students/grads who went there and did the legit work to get a degree shouldn't be punished by revoking the school's accreditation. The "neighborhood" isnt other schools, it is all the UNC grads (at least that's how I read it anyway).
Don't many graduate schools require an undergraduate degree from an accredited 4 year college? if UNC's accreditation is revoked, would UNC grads may be barred from admission to grad school? That seems unnecessarily harsh.
Syracuse is being summoned before the infractions committee this upcoming Thursday and Friday to answer for allegations related to, in part, grade issues/tutors doing schoolwork. There aren't a whole lot of details, but everything I've seen makes it seem the misconduct falls into the category of "stuff that happens at every major athletic department" (which is not to excuse the behavior). It'll be interesting, and perhaps telling, to see how the NCAA punishes this kind of behavior, in light of the UNC scandal.
Was (Not Wasdin) said:
This is a needless distraction, so let me state it this way. The incoherence comes from a shifting of the goalposts.
His original comment was "In one form or another, this practice takes place in most of the "elite" athletic powers. These guys just happen to get caught. " That's an argument to mitigate the punishment for UNC because their behavior is not unique, and I used the speeding analogy to point it out.
In response, he stated "I don't expect my speeding to get a pass because others do it. I also don't expect to pay a penalty because someone in my neighborhood cheated on his taxes." In essence, he's saying don't punish students who had nothing to do with the misconduct.
That's a perfectly valid point. But it's a very different point than he made earlier and that I commented on. I would think that was clear from my post because I have explicitly stated several times that a loss of accreditation is too severe and is not likely to happen here.
And with that's I'll end the digression.
LeftyTG said:
I agree this will be interesting. The following isn't a critique of your post but just a general point...
One of the fundamental issues that many people (esp gryoung) seem to be missing in this conversation is that UNC's actions were qualitatively different than "grade issues/tutors doing schoolwork," which I agree probably occurs at many if not most major athletic departments. If tutors are going over the line in helping kids with their papers/work, that is a significant problem. But those kids generally still have to attend classes, take tests, etc. And instances of papers being written wholesale by others and then passed off as the work of athletes are often fairly easy to pinpoint for professors, most of whom have very little incentive or desire to compromise their professional integrity just to keep some kid eligible. So you are more likely to see athletes work on a paper and receive plenty of "help" from tutors, which isn't optimal but its not like the athlete is doing nothing whatsoever in most cases. In sum, while this stuff almost certainly goes on, and is absolutely wrong and problematic and should be sanctioned, it largely constitutes ways of cheating the system at the margin. This has been my experience teaching at three different schools with major athletics programs.
UNC's system was completely different. They required literally nothing from thousands of students, other than a "paper" that received no actual academic review and was often (apparently) primarily just a list of quotations, and awarded credit. That's not cheating the system at the margin - its a complete farce. That is simply gross academic and institutional malpractice. I would not favor UNC losing accreditation but the idea that this is merely an athletic scandal and that the institution more generally should face no repercussions is simply indefensible. What is the point of having any kind of oversight of academic institutions if they won't be sanctioned for giving degrees based on classroom education that never occurred? At a minimum, they should revoke all the credit for each of these fake classes and void the degrees of students who needed these classes to graduate, while offering the ability to those students (and former students) to make up the coursework for free (probably through online classes, given the logistics). That is the only way for the institution to be able to once again claim with a straight face that its degrees and transcripts reflect actual achievement and training in the classroom.
Very well put. The SACS also needs to take some action like probating UNC until those degrees are voided and something to prevent this from taking place again. If not the SACS is also a sham.Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
I think it's also worth noting that if UNC were Boise state or something the hammer would already be coming down with respect to losing accreditation. Instead it's a 200+ year old institution with a huge alumni base so we're pacing around asking ourselves what we're going to do.
Skeesix said:
I don't think it's the alumni base that really matters; like others have said, losing accreditation has enormous implications for all sorts of things that aren't at all related to athletics. UNC gets hundreds of millions in research funding (see http://research.unc.edu/about/facts-rankings/research-funding/) - losing accreditation would likely impact many of those (I'd be surprised if many of those grants can be given to non-accredited schools), and would have a hugely negative impact for faculty / grad students / postdocs livelihoods, all of whom have absolutely no connection to this scandal. You'd screw over every single current undergrad, many of whom similarly weren't taking part in this (and what happens to a sophomore who has 2 years of student loans? They have to try to transfer and hope that most of their credits will be accepted?). It's not the school history as much as the size of the school (and how little the athletics really matters in real-world terms of the school's economics).
I think you'd see an NCAA death penalty before you saw losing accreditation - I don't think that's a serious risk for any major university at this point without something insanely crazy (like the school automatically giving every student A's if they donated $5k or something). For a tiny school in the middle of nowhere, sure... but a school of the size of UNC there's just too many unintended consequences for it to be a serious outcome.
Given that one of the primary purposes of the scheme was to keep athletes in revenue-generating sports eligible, you do realize that they sold grades for a lot more than $5k here, right?
Gdiguy said:
At no point did I say that UNC should lose its accreditation. I just want some kind of probation along with the action that MMS describes as his minimum. I am quite well-aware of the research impact as well. On the contrary, perhaps the NSF, NIH, etc. should demand from schools which are eligible for their grants some sort of assurance that some accreditation-imperiling academic scandal will not come from the athletic department's influence. I mean, if that's a legitimate worry for researchers, they should get some cover from the granting agency. Heck, Lamar Smith already has a bone to pick with the NSF ( http://news.sciencemag.org/policy/2014/10/battle-between-nsf-and-house-science-committee-escalates-how-did-it-get-bad). I'm sure he'll be glad to help keep his Alma Mater SMU in line.
Skeesix said:
It's simpler than this. No accreditation = no federal financial aid funds = turn off the lights.
UNC's upper administration has been under heavy pressure from it's accreditor, SACSCOC. This has gone as far as having the provost send out observers to random selections of classrooms to ensure that courses are actually being held. But of course, yanking the accreditation of a university this large and prestigious would be both unprecedented and deeply political. As righteous as the cause may be, the volunteer reviewers at the independent, non-profit accreditation agency won't get to make this call.
As an academic, I'm of the opinion that this is exactly the sort of thing that should make a major school lose its accreditation. They weren't running courses, and it was a systematic and long-term decision on the part of many levels of administration. This was not purely an athletic scandal, but one that substantially involved non-athletes as well.
The purpose of accreditation is straightforward -- it means that if you have a degree on your resume from the University of North Carolina, that degree carries a standard meaning. What we have learned is that this is not true for a sizable number of former students. That means the starting point for cleanup is that every single degree that was earned using one of these courses must be revoked, with those students given the opportunity to replace the courses and graduate for real.
What would realistically happen if it lost accreditation? We don't really know, but I can make a reasonable guess. UNC would have to dip deep into its $2.3B endowment in order to replace federal funding while it is not accredited. I don't expect it would send its students home with no financial aid, but rather that it would replace those funds from its endowment, as the alternative is having almost no students and everybody transferring. There would, as a result, be major and nearly immediate changes, which would be good for all schools facing this sort of decision. As long as it got accredited again within a year, which would be a reasonable timeline, the school would survive. The grants are a bit more complicated, as often the money is paid up front, but UNC would be unable to apply for new grants during this year. So the financial hit would be large in the first year but continue for at least several years thereafter.
When you consider how much of that endowment is raised by having such a strong athletic program, this seems appropriate to me. Part of the punishment should be disgorging UNC of the profits from its action, and that, not closing the school entirely, would be the realistic outcome of losing accreditation for a year. It hasn't happened before at a major research university, so to some extent we're guessing, but it's merited here.
The purpose of accreditation is straightforward -- it means that if you have a degree on your resume from the University of North Carolina, that degree carries a standard meaning. What we have learned is that this is not true for a sizable number of former students. That means the starting point for cleanup is that every single degree that was earned using one of these courses must be revoked, with those students given the opportunity to replace the courses and graduate for real.
What would realistically happen if it lost accreditation? We don't really know, but I can make a reasonable guess. UNC would have to dip deep into its $2.3B endowment in order to replace federal funding while it is not accredited. I don't expect it would send its students home with no financial aid, but rather that it would replace those funds from its endowment, as the alternative is having almost no students and everybody transferring. There would, as a result, be major and nearly immediate changes, which would be good for all schools facing this sort of decision. As long as it got accredited again within a year, which would be a reasonable timeline, the school would survive. The grants are a bit more complicated, as often the money is paid up front, but UNC would be unable to apply for new grants during this year. So the financial hit would be large in the first year but continue for at least several years thereafter.
When you consider how much of that endowment is raised by having such a strong athletic program, this seems appropriate to me. Part of the punishment should be disgorging UNC of the profits from its action, and that, not closing the school entirely, would be the realistic outcome of losing accreditation for a year. It hasn't happened before at a major research university, so to some extent we're guessing, but it's merited here.
The problem is that not everyone has the reading, writing, mathematical and organizational skills needed to become a successful college student. This is compounded by the 3+ hours of practice/training required of athletes. Any special program for athletes could not include GE requirements which would result in a degree of little meaning.
The situation at UNC and other schools is caused, in a large part, by the lack of minor leagues in football and basketball. An athlete with dubious academic skills, that wants to pursue a professional career in those sports, is often forced to masquerade as a college student.
The situation at UNC and other schools is caused, in a large part, by the lack of minor leagues in football and basketball. An athlete with dubious academic skills, that wants to pursue a professional career in those sports, is often forced to masquerade as a college student.
May as well eliminate the pretense of accreditation if they don't get to make that call.67YAZ said:
I'm not saying UNC in particular should or shouldn't have theirs yanked, just that if the independent, non-profit accreditation agency doesn't get to make that call then it really isn't an independent accreditation agency at all--making that call is, in fact, its entire reason for existing.
Drip drip drip...
NCAA president Mark Emmert:
Charlotte News & Observer:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/28/4272207_whether-quit-or-be-fired-by-unc.html?sp=/99/108//&rh=1
TMQ:
SC paper:
NCAA president Mark Emmert:
Charlotte News & Observer:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/28/4272207_whether-quit-or-be-fired-by-unc.html?sp=/99/108//&rh=1
TMQ:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/page/TMQWeekEight1410228/factoring-academics-college-football-playoff-tuesday-morning-quarterback
SC paper:
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20141023/PC20/141029714
I like this post. Stripping an entire university system of accreditation seems just a tad heavy-handed.DrewDawg said:
I'll say again that while I don't expect the NCAA to have the guts, anything less than the death penalty for all sports who engaged in the fraud combined with show-cause letters for the coaches will just reek of a cover up.
Emmert's comments are promising, but I'll believe it when I see it from him.
Emmert's comments are promising, but I'll believe it when I see it from him.
Fred in Lynn said:
Agreed. I didn't know you could revoke accreditation on a program by program basis.
They'll never do the death penalty again. It has too many unintended consequences for people who had nothing to do with it. Just like TV bans, it hurts the other schools in the conference, in this case because the other schools lose games, and it hurts players who arrived after the infractions took place. If the players want to stay, why make them sit out a year? Even if they get immediate transfers, why make them leave? Ban the teams from non-conference games (which opponents can easily replace), and post-season, and penalize the coaches who knew about it.
