Looks like it was deeper and more pervasive than originally thought. Unfortunately my faith in the NCAA doing anything significant is low. Still an interesting read though.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/unc-academic-and-athleti...
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http://www.si.com/college-football/2014/10/22/north-carolina-academic-fr... ive got 3100 haha you beat me to it
3,100 students... of them 1,500 were athletes
And then there is this part which, if you're an alumnus of that University should piss you off more than anything...
Students were able to get their GPA inflated to the point where they earned degrees as a direct result of taking these classes. It completely undermines the integrity of their institution and devalues the degree of everyone else.
My best friend went to Tennessee and he took a psych course that counted for his math requirement. It was a loop hole made available to athletes that only lasted a few years. He was so bad at math that his advisor signed him up for the psych class and said don't worry, it's taken care of.
I don't think this sort of thing is as uncommon as we'd like to believe.
3100 is the total number of students. About half of them were student-athletes
yeah, but how did non-athletes end up in these classes? and here I thought UNC would've been so much harder than JMU was. guess not.
I'm guessing they recruited non-athletes to the class as cover. Seems to have worked well.
There's no need to recruit students to it. Just publicize it, and make sure all the athletes get priority in scheduling. That's all that needs to be done. Students learn quickly which classes are the crib courses. By my soph year, I absolutely knew which half dozen classes to take for electives if I wanted to pad my GPA. There's no need to recruit anybody. Kids find out what classes the ballers take, and they know how it works.
Even more disturbing is the lack of institutional control whereby they had counselors steering the students into the classes.
It's hardly a lack of institutional control. The courses were open for anyone enrolled at UNC to take, and in fact more non-athletes took them than athletes. (1600 vs 1500). As tragic as this is from an academic rigor perspective, the athletic department and their academic counselors didn't create the class and give easy grades, they just knew the classes were easy and graded generously. Crowder & Nyang'oro and their bosses on the academic side are the ones responsible.
Scholarship atheletes in almost every college in almost every sport are strongly encouraged to take classes & majors that aren't particularly difficult, so that they can have enough time for their sport while having a good chance of being successful academically even with all the demands on their time above and beyond that of regular students.
edit:
I should be more clear about the meaning of "lack of institutional control" .. that term refers to the school's academic leadership having control over the atheletics department and making sure the athletic directors, coaches and players follow NCAA rules.
Academic standards are generally left up to the school to establish and maintain as they see fit, since the NCAA doesn't manage academic activities beyond requiring athletes to maintain a certain level of academic qualificaiton.
UNC should be getting serious heat from the academics accreditation bodies, even if that department was never specifically accredited by an indpendent body in the first place, the overall university should be held responsible.
When you do it by percentages of each part of the student body (nonathletes versus athletes), it looks extremely bad.
If the athletic department new about it and did nothing for the fear of hurting the athletic department, it could be viewed as lack of institution control. Not totally different from Penn St. However, I personally agree that the university should take the hit for this, not the sports programs.
I am always reminded of that one witch from UNC who spoke against us joining the ACC because we were so, you know... 'dirty'. I really wish she were forced to be the media spokesperson for UNC on this entire matter.
Their penalty will be a redshirted player will have to sit out the first half of their next game.
Justice...you've been served, Homey!
I love this, I live here in NC and have always had to listen to these jerks and their superiority complex. Man, I am going to enjoy this. :-)
They'll still try to justify it with the old "everyone does it" excuse they have been spewing the past 5 years. The funniest thing about this to me, is that they had all these fake classes and cheated, but could still never get the football team above 8-4...
UNC has always been a basketball school, anyway. Three national titles, five ACC titles, sixteen NCAA tournament appearances, and eight Final Fours while all this was going on.
It's because they don't care about football. Oh, they might give an occasional pretense. They even hired Butch, thanks to the ranting of a particularly affluent and influential donor. But when Butch told them how much it would cost to build an elite program, they blanched.
No matter what they say, UNC just doesn't care about football. I'm not saying that they just like basketball more - I'm saying they don't care about being elite in football, period. Part of that is shown by the fact they had this program long before Butch ever came to UNC. So, the folks that can add 2+2 can pretty well figure out the actual motive here for the Afr-American Studies.
UNC is just like NC State in one regard - they want to have winning teams in football, and beat their rivals. Other than that, they don't care. What they DO care about is basketball. Always have, always will. Not since Dean Smith, since decades before Dean Smith. It's the culture there in the Triangle.
UNC cares about nothing important, but don't kid yourself they care about everything sports. They may have a pecking order, but they will drop any pretense of morality to win in any sport.
http://openjurist.org/482/f3d/686/jennings-v-university-of-north-carolin...
http://www.ncherm.org/documents/2010NCHERMWhitepaperFinal.pdf
Women's soccer. Suits eventually settled for over 400k and an admission that the coach asked inappropriate sexual questions.
Noone got fired.
Noone gave a flipping f**k.
Noone. Not recruits, not recruits parents, nooone in the university.
Our society is going the way of Rome ... FSU, UNC... all these things are symptoms of a much deeper more fundamental problem that goes to the core of who we are as people.
The question about 'lack of institutional control' is an ironic one, because this was clearly a program that was developed with quite a bit of institutional input. The damning feature of this is that there are really only two possible reasons for this - The first would be to enable subpar athletes to achieve artificially inflated grades to remain eligible and even to graduate. The second option would be to create that artificial boost for any student that would be very likely to enroll in this program, which sounds more than a little like profiling for a negative stereotype.
The fact that there are more non-athlete students than athletes enrolled doesn't make this any less suspicious. In fact, it would show that the university made sure to camouflage the program be letting lots of 'regular' students in so that it wasn't a jocks-only study. It might be difficult to prove, but I would bet there were students who couldn't get into the class, but I guarantee there were no athletes that could NOT get in the class.
I'm late to the UNC academic mayhem party. Did they really name this class A-F-R-O American studies?
What the hell is that?
There's nothing wrong with the title of the class.
It's a common abbreviation when referring to things of the African American persuasion. Similarly, Ameri-Indian is sometimes used in place of American Indian or Native American.
I guess I'm being a bit obtuse today. You guys are both correct. Legs for both of you.
Surprisingly, its actually an art course.
Nice... I should've seen that coming.
This isn't Lack of Institutional Control, because this was happening with the full knowledge by everyone involved about what was going on, and they were allowing and promoted the activities. This was blatant, brazen breaking of the rules in place, and the NCAA should come down on them for it, and they should do it harshly. Outright academic fraud that allowed athletes to remain eligible that had been going on for 2 decades is appalling. If the NCAA doesn't have rules to punish acts like this, then they should use this situation as the time when they are created and implemented.
If a kid accepting $700 can get you a conference title stripped like it did to GT, outright academic fraud should wipe the books clean of all sports during the entire timeframe it was happening. Strip UNC of every athletic accomplishment it has had since 1993 and put the entire Athletic Department on Probation for the next 5 years. Then let the academic accreditors have their way with them as well.
As bad as the whole SMU situation was, this is worse, and it involves the whole athletic department. They have single handedly embarrassed every one of their peer institutions and called the whole system into question.
This is not worse than the SMU scandal. It is bad, but not at that level. It is indeed much worse for the academic profile of the university. SMU was far beyond this, though. That doesn't diminish this, but don't confuse dislike for the athletic program with the facts.
If the NCAA wanted to do an ounce of work on this, they'd go back through the enrollment records and see which athletes benefited and how it impacted their grades. Then go on from there. Problem is - we all know the NCAA has certain schools that are on the untouchable list, and UNC basketball is one of them, as is their rival fifteen miles up the road in Durham.
So, if the NCAA gets too far into this, they'll produce results that would please many fan bases, but would also show how little the NCAA itself monitors anything. They can't afford that.
I understand what you're saying, but I still disagree and say that UNC is worse than SMU for 2 main reasons.
1 - This was a complete failure of the institution at its simple basic core, which is to provide a world class education for its students so that they have a valuable degree when they graduate. This whole program completely undermined everything that the university system of the United States stands for. While people may say this kind of stuff happens elsewhere, I have to disagree. Yes, every school has its easy subjects, at Virginia Tech we have Personal Health, but I don't hear of any other schools giving away grades for classes that simply don't exist. That is the level to which UNC stooped, and the quality of classes they were funneling their athletes into to stay eligible. And its not like it was a secret that this was going on. School administrators and coaching staffs (Bill Guthridge & Butch Davis were both mentioned by name to having knowledge of what was going on) knew about this and were allowing the athletic advisers to pump kids into these classes. Yes, this was a scandal that went beyond athletics, but lets not sit back and pretend that the athletic coaches and staff did not have any culpability whatsoever in what was happening. If Penn St can get penalized for Joe Paterno having knowledge and doing nothing with it, so should the athletic dept of UNC.
2 - How quickly we forget that we already have evidence of players getting paid while they were at UNC, which led to the dismissal of Butch Davis. So all the while all this blatant academic fraud was going on while players were getting good grades in classes that didn't exist to inflate their GPA to keep them eligible, we still have evidence that UNC athletics were allowing the same kind of behavior that earned SMU the Death Penalty.
This is the single largest all-around academic and athletic scandal we have ever seen in the history of collegiate athletics. UNC has shown consistent behavior over the past 20 years that has gotten numerous other schools on probation, or led to postseason bans, loss of scholarships, and even the NCAA Death Penalty. If ever there was a school that deserved to get hammered for infractions, it is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I don't agree with your hyperbole, but we're each left to our own conclusions about the respective scandals, and interpretations of what we expect to happen. UNC won't be punished as harshly as SMU, no matter what folks desire.
I took and got an A in that VT Personal Health class!
lol so did I.
The thing with that class, though, is that it was basically 50% attendance. If you simply showed up for class every day you were almost guaranteed a passing grade. The rest was based on your homework and test scores, all of which you would easily know just by going to class without having to study a second. But that's a big point that differs between the VT cake classes and these UNC classes. We still had to go to class to earn a grade. These UNC classes were no-show classes where your grade was literally 'write one paper at the end of the year', and that paper was never fact checked or checked for plagiarism (the extent of which is appalling when you really look into it). It was essentially "oh, you turned it in? A- at a minimum".
Again with the hyperbole. I get it, you hate UNC. That's fine with me. I've no love lost for them, either. You're letting your dislike color your perspective, though. As was mentioned in the papers, lots of 'student-athletes' received grades lower than A-. It was basically based on what grade the guys needed, with an eye to not make everything too blatant. The degree of corruptness doesn't need to be falsified in order to condemn UNC. They're dirty, not the dirtiest ever, & not stupid in their corruptness. That is why it went on for nearly two decades. It's also why there are similar circumstances all across the country, just not discovered. This is an insult to a lot of things academic & athletic, but it's not the worst ever, no matter how much you wish it were.
There's no hyperbole. I'm stating facts as they were presented within the report.
I'm starting to think you only read the headlines and didn't take the time to read what the report found.
No, there's lots of hyperbole - like when you called this the worst scandal in the history of the NCAA. Things like that are hyperbole that is unnecessary. I could list the other extreme claims, but I know your mind won't be changed. All I'm saying is that you don't have to pretend this is the ultimate in crimes in order to paint them as a criminal. I know that won't dissuade you on the campaign though, so forge ahead...
There is a personal health class at VT? Huh, you learn something new every day.
And Drug Ed...Kerry Redican (sp?) FTW!
There was a particular Astronomy class & a Theatre Arts class back in my day that tended to have a lot of Hokie athletes involved. We also had a class titled - Calculus As A Liberal Art - which was pretty self explanatory, if you know what I mean. I'll admit, I did sign up for that one. it was too hard to resist.
To me, it's a grand irony that these kids chose to attend a highly-touted state university then enrolled in these bogus classes. The free or discounted college education is the biggest perk of being a student-athlete. It's a shame that they didn't take or weren't encouraged to take full advantage of that.
I have to wonder if UNC planned the classes availability to all to prevent the NCAA hammer from dropping on a bogus athletic setup. After all the NCAA has already said this wasn't an issue to them as the fake classes weren't restricted to athletes.
I would love to see UNC stripped of its accreditation as a major university over the worst national academic scandal in decades. Losing accreditation would hurt more than anything the NCAA could do. All the graduates with one of those classes on their transcript should be informed those classes no longer count towards the graduation requirements and they are revoking the graduate certificates accordingly if their credits are now insufficient or with the grades removed they no longer had a sufficient QCA for graduation.
I think, ultimately, the NCAA will do nothing. The athletes were making use of a program that other students were, perhaps disproportionately, but it's not like they were getting some special treatment. The school needs to be held accountable, certainly, but I wonder to what extent. I know a bunch of current and former UNC students who worked hard, got advanced degrees, and did exceptional research there. While I'd love to see the hammer come down on them, solely on principle, how much of that good work would be destroyed because there was a rogue department doing all this stuff?
I haven't fully formulated my thoughts on this, to be honest, but that's just where I start. A severe punishment like loss of accreditation could do more harm than good, though something has to be done. Maybe only certain schools within the university get hammered? Certain programs?
The NCAA will do little, at the most. They might do nothing, or they might do a little, but they will not do much. If they did much, then it would call into question why they didn't check this out better & sooner. And those questions would be extremely hard to defend. So, the enabling by the NCAA leaves them vulnerable. This will make a lot of press, but in the end, not much will happen. The NCAA can't afford for much to happen. It might not be 'right' but not that much in the world necessarily is fair the way we'd like.
This is a pretty big stain on their academic reputation, some potential college athletes will probably be turned off by this (the ones that harbor no illusions about going pro in their respective sports and attend UNC for its high academic standing which would help land them a better job after graduation...people like Travis Hughes, for example). They might actually now be the fifth-best perceived academic school in North Carolina within the ACC. That'll put a hurting on their smug alumni and their ceaseless crowing about the Carolina Way. Sucks to be U(NC)...hey it's Miami week, I couldn't resist.
That this went on for 18 yrs. with no questions or oversight by administration, faculty , coaches or accreditation bodies is hard to understand and is inexcusable . FSU,Miami and UNC have damaged the reputation of the conference & the ACC is now being compared to the worst in the SEC. Nothing will happen by NCAA since UNC is Swoffords "golden boy" & FSU a cash cow.
I have to disagree.The athletes did indeed get special treatment. These classes weren't created for the general student body in mind, they were created for athletes. The general student body found out about them and started taking them.
Here's some information to back up the special treatment:
This newspaper excerpt is based on an email from UNC Academic Advising Official Betsy Taylor to Debbie Crowder:
The correspondence also shows that in early 2005, Crowder raised concerns that too many students were seeking to enroll in independent studies within her department. She had told one advising official that word about the departments independent studies had sort of gotten into the frat circuit."
These classes were to be closed to only those they wanted in them.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/08/2948647/former-unc-african-studie...
Here's another example where a new class was opened at the request of an academic counselor for athletes:
Perhaps the most damning exchange came in March 2010, when Jaimie Lee, an academics counselor for athletes, asked Nyang'oro about a Swahili class:
I failed to mention yesterday that Swahili 403 last summer was offered as a research paper course, wrote Lee, who was helping football players at the time. I meant to (ask), do you think this may happen again in the future?? If not the summer, maybe the fall?
Nyangoro responded: Driving a hard bargain; should have known.....:)Will have to think about this, but talk to me....
Nyangoro did not schedule the Swahili class, but he did create another one for the summer. Later that day, he emailed Lee: I have added AFAM 398 to our Summer Schedule.:).
Read more from this ESPN story here: http://espn.go.com/blog/north-carolina-basketball/post/_/id/13351/unc-ac...
Or how about this email from the Assistant Director of Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes to Professor Nyang'oro:
Read more damaging emails here from Raleigh News Observer:
http://www.newsobserver.com/content/media/2013/6/8/uncemail.pdf
And, finally, if you're an athlete and you no longer have to worry about studying and maintaining an appropriate grade point average, wouldn't that be a huge advantage over the other school's athletes? Here's a quote from a story from ABC News on UNC basketball player Rashad McCants:
Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on the North Carolina basketball team that won the 2004-05 national title, told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that tutors wrote his term papers, he rarely went to class for about half his time at UNC, and he remained able to play largely because he took bogus classes designed to keep athletes academically eligible.
McCants told "Outside the Lines" that he could have been academically ineligible to play during the championship season had he not been provided the assistance. Further, he said head basketball coach Roy Williams knew about the "paper class" system at UNC. The so-called paper classes didn't require students to go to class; rather, students were required to submit only one term paper to receive a grade.
McCants also told "Outside the Lines" that he even made the dean's list in the spring of 2005 despite not attending any of his four classes for which he received straight-A grades. He said advisers and tutors who worked with the basketball program steered him to take the paper classes within the African-American Studies program.
Read more of the story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/uncs-mccants-show-play/story?id=26381414
And, this doesn't even mention the money the players took from agents, free rental cars, associate head coach John Blake taking illegal money from agent Gary Wichard to steer his players to sign with Wichard and this list goes on and on.
Sorry I just can't agree. While the air definitely smells of an academic scandal, the eyes can see for sure this is an athletic scandal of epic proportions and I don't think we will ever know all the skeletons in the UNC closet.
True enough, but I still think the NCAA won't do anything, largely because they probably won't be able to establish that these "paper classes" were established solely for athletes. That mostly comes from my belief that the NCAA is ineffective and can try to explain away a lot of things. I don't disagree at all that this crap is shady beyond belief, but I have to think the NCAA won't ultimately touch it.
I would also take anything Rashad McCants says with a heavy grain of salt. I don't know his deal, but he is trying to throw everyone under the bus, and didn't he claim that he got millions of dollars from UNC, which was ultimately total BS? Now there may be some kernel of truth to what he claims, given all that's going on, but I still view his statements somewhat skeptically.
And, I agree with you, I'm not holding my breath on what the NCAA will do. They had an opportunity to do something much bigger with the facts that came out previously and only slapped them on the wrist. I don't think much will come of this other than UNC's national reputation has been greatly tarnished.
I can also agree with you on McCants. I'm not sure he's the best witness, but as you stated, he came out and made these outrageous claims, UNC immediately went on the defensive and brought out many of his teammates and Roy Williams to dispute them, but now we have the Weinstein Report which gives more credibility to what McCants said happened.
For me this scandal really hits home because I think back to all the recruits UNC / Butch Davis beat us for when we were in the final 2 or 3 especially on the defensive side of the ball during our 10-win seasons and wonder what impact these guys might have had for us provided we could get them to attend class.
Is anyone really surprised a university has an underwater basket weaving class?
Not really. Most jokes are rooted in reality somehow.
I was a student athlete at Tech and this doesn't sound all that malicious to me, though certainly unscrupulous. I think this is probably common practice at many institutions. Think about the disparity in educational backgrounds across a campus that are even more exaggerated with student athletes.
Yes, UNC sucks, but it's unfortunately (to paraphrase Animal House) "an indictment on our whole American society". Cheating is pervasive which is not necessarily to mean at every institution or individual. But many seem to believe it's OK to do whatever it takes to win and enrich themselves. We see it everywhere, in government, business, sports, school and on and on. As we try to follow the rules, it begs the question what to do about it? I really think if the NCAA doesn't act strongly here, the fans, if they truly want to see student athletes play, ought to start voting with their feet. Otherwise just make football or whatever sport a major and be done with it. I'd be OK with that. Guys get on-the-job training how to be coaches, trainers, pro players, whatever and many would probably be better prepared to leave school and make a living for themselves than as refugees from crip courses.
See Sue Estroff's remarks regarding Virginia Tech's inclusion into the ACC...
"Part of our concern all along has been the way that sports and athletes fit into the university. There is very little tolerance on our campus for misdeeds and misbehavior by athletes. I'm not saying we're any better, but I do know what happens around here when somebody gets into trouble."
Oh really? I'll see myself out.
At that point, the paper classes had been going on at UNC for over half a decade.
Exactly. Which makes the comments she made even more asinine.
When I cheat, I prefer to do it with "Motivational Cheating"....
I don't believe the NCAA will do much when it comes to punishing UNC. However, I don't see why the Federal or State government can't ask for UNC to pay back the money it received in the form of financial aid and scholarships for student-athletes. This to me would be a substantial blow to the athletic department as well as the university for their lack of compliance and misuse of tax payers money.
Reason #536 why the NCAA will do nothing:
In siting at a bar in downtown dc (little pregame table gating), there are 2 TVs on: one showing ESPN, the other CNN.
CNN is reporting on story regularly. Saying it's "shocking" and "Astonishing". Even has a reporter in Chapel Hill with regular updates (PANDA WATCH!).
ESPN is hardly taking about it. They mention it in passing and always throw in "although no indication/evidence of whether athletics department officials were involved". Worldwide leader in sports not covering the biggest story right now in sports...what does that tell you?
It tells you what we all already knew - UNC is part of the college sports 1%.
Guess where the president of ESPN grew up and went to school? North Carolina
Not saying anything just pointing out that ESPN President John Skipper has his undergraduate degree from UNC.
Skipper Bio: http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about-disney/leadership/business-unit-ma...