So as it turns out, the crooks over at UNC told their accreditors (SACS) one thing in 2013 as part of their probation deal. Then they turned around and told the NCAA something completely opposite.
Basically part of the deal they made with SACS to avoid losing accreditation included the condition that the 'paper' classes wouldn't count toward anyone's degree. But then UNC turned around and told the NCAA that everything was fine with the classes and that they counted towards degrees like any other valid degree program.
UNC's accreditation is up for review next month and SACS is reading the NCAA infraction committee report and asking why UNC would tell them one thing and then tell the NCAA something else...
I really hope 1) that UNC actually loses their accreditation this time and 2) that results in severe consequences for UNC.. something simple like loss of Federal Student Loan access or loss of all Federal research funding would be nice. If anyone can chime in on what losing accreditation would do to UNC, I'd appreciate it.
Comments
If there is anything I have learned from this whole ordeal it's that UNC can wiggle its way out of anything. Don't expect anything serious to happen to UNC
With the NCAA, I agree with you. But do the accreditors have a reason to give a flying fuck about them?
My guess is they will get additional funding and bonuses.
If they actually lose their accreditation that would be the end. No sports at NCAA level, removal from AAU, lose of millions of dollars of research and grant money and on and on.
They should lose their accreditation.
They won't. There is to much money to be lost by doing so. But they should.
It would be much better if they kept accreditation but the NCAA came back and killed their football and basketball programs.
Regular students and "real" student athletes shouldn't suffer. UNC is a good school and we shouldn't want to kill that for the sake of sports justice. We should just kill their money programs.
Sports Justice? They are giving fake classes for easy grades then lying to the NCAA and anybody else they can to get out of it. How can you say a school who operates under that premise a "good school"?
There are a lot of good students there who attend REAL classes, get REAL degrees, and make actual contributions to the world. At VT, we treat the school as a community (students and faculty), and I'm giving UNC the same treatment. It's a good school with administrators who made some very irresponsible choices. Heads should roll, the programs (sports) who the irresponsible choices were meant to benefit should suffer the consequences.
I'm not saying thats what WILL happen, but I think its what should happen.
I'm one of those people that hold parents accountable for the actions of their children. UNC administrators knew what was going on so the entire school should suffer. Integrity is doing the right thing while nobody is looking and UNC has none. It's not fair to punish educational institutions for finding out a player took a few hundred bucks for autographs meanwhile letting a school off the hook for academic fraud. I for one think that academic fraud should be 1,000,000% more important to NCAA than weather or not a player got a little money. once again.. Just my opinion.
I agree with you completely (EDIT: regarding NCAA being more involved in academics, not about punishing the whole school).
Unfortunately -- and if I'm reporting this wrong, that's my bad -- the member institutions of the NCAA voted a long time ago that they don't want the organization to have power over academic affairs. So now they're stuck.
I'm sorry but I don't see how that analogy relates to screwing over students who had nothing to do with this. The students aren't the parents in this situation. They are people who had no idea what was going on, were not involved in any way, and should not be severely punished for this. The people in charge and the programs involved should suffer. UNC is a good school. As much as you might not like them and as bad as this scandal is, when you're talking about how they perform as a school they are one of the best in the nation. Would you say Harvard isn't a good school because of how elitist it is and how it often accepts connections over merit? I'm guessing not so you can't say the same here. Trust me I don't like UNC either but I have a lot of friends that go there and don't deserve to be punished because of the sins of their athletic department.
If you're attending a school where they are literally giving away diplomas to kids who had their GPAs bolstered by nonexistent classes, your degree should be utterly worthless.
I get not wanting to punish those who have done nothing wrong, but unfortunately, that's the world we live in. Guilty by association where one bad apple will absolutely spoil the bunch. The administration of UNC has gone out of its way to make sure that the world knows they value athletics over academics, going so far as to completely and utterly sacrifice their academic integrity to save their sports. And now its being shown they are lying through both sides of their mouth, depending on which investigator is in their offices at the time.
And they've been more than forthcoming that this is an academic issue, which is why the NCAA had no jurisdiction. Hell, they went on legal record to say that. Right after telling SACS a completely different story. So yeah, I'm not sorry at all if they get academically butchered for this.
Exaggerate much? You think a kid who got a business or biology or whatever degree that may have taken one or two sham classes doesn't deserve a diploma? You think that's giving it away? How many electives did you take at tech that were complete jokes? Come on that is an utterly ridiculous statement.
I don't blame the students, but the University is essentially committing fraud
Haha I agree.
The whole thing has been exaggerated in my opinion. I'm tired of hearing about how dreadful it is....it's not.
I know I wouldn't hire someone with an AFAM class on their transcript. If they're willing to cheat at school, they're willing to cheat me as their employer.
It's pretty simple. Don't give fake classes and you won't have this mess. It may not be the fault of EVERY student but it still doesn't excuse the fact that they gave free grades. If that makes your diploma worthless direct your frustrations where it belongs. In the face of the administrators of the school. How could any grade the school give not have a hint of scandal? You say they are a good school. That's fine, but it's up to the school to prove it. As of now they are doing a piss poor job of it.
Its not even the fault of the simple majority of the students. Or even a 1%. Revoking the validity of 10's of thousands of students's degrees (costing each of them 10's of thousands of dollars) with their recourse being frustration with the administrators, is your answer?
I mean...no they shouldn't. UNC is a public ivy with influence everywhere they need it. And we're talking about 0.00001% of the student body. None of their core programs are exposed. Wrist, meet slap, if you even have to.
Thank you. GTFO with all these overblown accusations.
Move along now, nothing to see here.
But in all seriousness, this is UNC. They are one of the bluebloods in NCAA basketball and nothing major will happen to them. The big money and politics of it all will override the fact that they blatantly cheated and deserve major punishment.
I know everyone hates that UNC is getting away with murder. but in this case, why does everyone want UNC to die? UNC basketball is a HUGE part of what makes ACC basketball successful and we need the national presence and the RPI of beating teams like them and although football wise they've never been a top tier program think about who would be the replacement if there was no more UNC? what are we talking here.... ECU would be my best bet and id want anything BUT ECU in the ACC. I maybe in the minority here but i don't want the death penalty for UNCheat, just take 20% or some # scholarships away from all sports and ban them from post season play in all sports for some decent amount of years. that would A.) help us even more in recruiting players from NC. and B) still all the ACC to keep one of its MAJOR brands alive. UNCs brand carries an absurd amount of weight just from Jordan alone. the brands are needed to keep the ACC thriving so future TV mega deals and things like that can be achieved.
I could give a crap about the Tobacco Road mafia running the ACC.
Not that I expect anything to actually happen, but yeah, ACC basketball is way more than just UNC and Duke these days
Being associated with schools that have academic integrity is more important than a conference's athletic image.
If you lived in the Triangle, you'd understand.
As for the part about UNC being that important. They're important, but the ACC would survive just fine if they tanked to irrelevancy. With Duke, Louisville, Syracuse, ND, Virginia, all in the fold, we can take the hit from UNC being put back in their place for a few years. This conference recruits and plays at such a high level overall that you cut off one head and another will take its place. The conference survived their downturn in the early 2000s, it would survive that scenario just fine.
Because principles and right and wrong still matter. If the proper punishment for UNC is loss of accreditation, then that should be the punishment. Same if it were Virginia Tech, UVA, Princeton, UCLA, Army...
If that means no more UNC basketball, so be it. If that hurts VT athletics, so be it. Your diploma should mean something, and these paper classes diminish every legitimate scholarship from UNC. Same is true if they were going on in Blacksburg, and I'd want the same punishment because it's the right thing to do.
Also, RPI has nothing to do with "who you beat". It's a mathematical equation of:
* 25% your winning percentage (1.4 wins for a road win, 0.6 losses for a road loss, 0.6 wins for a home win, 1.4 losses for a home loss, 1 win or loss for neutral site)
* 50% the average of your opponents' winning percentage (discounting games against you)
* 25% the average of your opponents' opponents' winning percentage (includes you)
Unfortunately at this point, it is a waste of time to read/write anything that has to do with UNC and their scandals. Nothing is going to happen to them.
Almost seems like the accreditor expected the NCAA to do something since the issue essentially stemmed from their sports programs and the NCAA was too chicken shit so now the ball is back in the accreditor's court. Pretty pathetic that the NCAA ultimately accepted UNC's argument when they should have easily been able to speak to the accreditor about the conditions required for them to decide to place UNC on probation.
The accreditors said this much when the NCAA came out with their ruling. They said that there were voices saying they should take away their accreditation, but they held off on the belief the NCAA would punish them, and they did not want to hurt the entire student body over an athletics issue.
Is it a coincidence that UNC has the lowest Graduation Success Rate in the ACC?
Miami is above us? Am I missing something?
They have an underwater basket weaving major for athletes as well as how to tan your body major. Hard to fail those in Miami.
I don't know about you but trying to weave a basket underwater sounds hard as hell, even if someone taught me how to do it.
Weave your basket in the sink or the bathtub instead of in the pool. Loopholes, man, loopholes.
Exactly, nobody said you had to be underwater, just the basket!
Who said anything about weaving it underwater? You weave it on dry land and use the basket underwater.
Not a diver, I'm guessing?
There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that they'll lose their accreditation. There are waaaaay too many powerful groups that have a real and vested interest in that not happening. I'm sure there will be some kind of report with some mildly harsh language in it talking about how bad it was and how they were THIS CLOSE to losing accreditation. Higher education has become such a money making machine for so many people that you can't touch it without an uproar.
Bingo for this man. See Miss Ethel at the end of the game to collect your prize.
Anyone or anything that made an actual attempt to strip UNC of its accreditation would be hit by such an avalanche of lawyers, filings, appeals, machetes, guns, and blow torches that they'd wish their mothers had never met their fathers.
#tobaccoroadmafiarepresent #snappingnecksandcashingchecksbro
Even if UNC lawyered up to the fullest extent, the action of stripping them of their accreditation would in and of itself be irreparable harm to the image and reputation of the university as a whole. If I were in a position to hire, I'd question anyone coming with a UNC degree, and no amount of legal handwringing will repair that.
And that's why it won't even come close to going there.
Exactly. My point.
Holy overboard.
Can they just pull accreditation from that college/department and grandfather the degrees for those studying it now?
My suspicion is that there will be some kind of middle-of-the-road approach like this that gets taken. While a certain school/college within UNC deserves to get hammered, other programs and the overall viability of the university should not. As much as we all foam at the mouth about how to best kill UNC over what is admittedly an awful scandal, there are many unrelated programs that are doing everything properly. There's no reason for a student nearing the completion of a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Biophysics to have the rug pulled out from under him/her (you know, by preventing UNC from giving out accredited degrees) because some BS went on in AFAM in the past.
This.
Athletes transfer all the time because it may be a better situation. If your diploma holding weight mattered to you that's exactly what I would do.
So is the SACS chaired by and populated with UNC grads?
There are 7 members for North Carolina, and only 1 (the chair of the state delegation) is a tar hole
Theyre not gonna lose accredidation that would kill the entire school. I imagine they might have some kind of hit in funding though
Yawn. If Penn State didn't lose accreditation over violating, ya know, actual (important) federal statues, no one is going to lose it. As said above maybe AFAM Studies does but I would bet there's just some probation slapped on administrators. The president or chancellor or whatever UNC has in charge would have sacrificed every sports team and anyone involved to the NCAA with 0 second thoughts if they thought there was a chance accreditation would be lost.
Why would you lose accreditation over something that happened which was despicable but had 0% to do with academics? Ethics perhaps... The punishment must fit the crime.
I agree with your sense of justice and how you feel, but rarely does the punishment fit the crime for anything that goes on. Especially in this day and age. There will be a smack on the hand and ridicule from others. That's about it.
Holy hyperbole batman
Quick comments:
Okay...Never thought I'd see quite this level of extremism from VT fans, but lets look at the facts:
1. UNC African-American Studies department/college had fake classes the athletes were guided to, but were ultimately available to ALL students.
2. SACS reviewed the situation and waited to see what the NCAA or ACC would do.
3. UNC made the very strong argument concerning the availability of the fake classes to ALL students and the lack of NCAA authority on accredation as removing the NCAA from any ability to interfere.
4. The SACS board is not populated by UNC alumni, and the ACC Commisioner's Office is.
5. I remember the Physics department at VT, one of the best engineering schools in the nation, not being accredited while I attended in 2007, and as a result, several engineering professors taught physics classes for the engineers. At no point did the entire University lose accredation for an incapable department.
The facts mean that UNC will be, and indeed must be, punished by someone. Available punishments in order of UNC's likely preference level of available punishments:
1. The SACS board places the University on probation, and requires the African-American Studies department/college be either brought up to spec or disbanded.
2. The ACC fines the University a percentage of it's sports income (likely 10-30%).
For my part, I expect the University Presidents to refuse to allow UNC to drag the ACC's reputation through the mud, and insist upon a fine, and possibly loss of scholarships. I also wouldn't be surprised if ACC Commissioner Swofford tried and failed to fight such a decision, resulting his termination. I further wouldn't be surprised if the SACS board refused to allow UNC to sully their position, as it is and remains important to many universities, many of which are not in the ACC. UNC will not be subject to a loss of accredation, but the department /college might be.
In '01 I got a 13 on an exam in Physics 2 and was curved to a high C. Yeah they had problems.
Worthy of note my first semester physics was taught by a very good teacher with extreme expectations, so while hard, I learned a lot. 2nd semester, not so much.