The University of North Carolina announced the results this week of an independent investigation into its past academic programs, concluding that over 3,000 students, nearly half of them athletes, had benefited from grade-inflated “phantom” courses.
A basic synopsis of the program: the University offered “paper courses” in its Afro-American studies department, courses that didn’t require students to do coursework, attend class, or even meet with professors. The only requirement of the class was a final paper at the end of the semester, and the investigation found that those in charge of the paper courses would automatically give out passing grades to many athletes to keep them eligible, most often members of the football and basketball teams.
You can read more about the scandal in the Washington Post or the New York Times, and the story has appeared in nearly every major publication over the past few days.
School officials found out about the program in 2009 and started making efforts to clean up the system, while also hiring former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein to investigate the situation more deeply. Wainstein’s report is the one UNC released this week.
Both the Post and the Times report that it was over 3,100 students who were involved in the scandal over its 18 year run, nearly half of them athletes. The Post reports that the majority of the athletes involved were from the school’s high-profile football and basketball programs. It’s unclear whether any swimmers were ever involved in the program, though the swimming programs were not named among the five specifically in the report (football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, and women’s soccer). The impact of this investigation, though, will undoubtedly touch the entire athletics department.
UNC released Wainstein’s entire report on its website. You can find it, plus more information and the school’s initiatives and action programs, here.
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so UNC has been cheating for two decades, but hasn’t sniffed the ACC title since ’98?
Do you really think this situation is unique to UNC?
I went to a Big 10 school in the 1980s. Everyone knew this went on with the football players!! And, the athletes lived in their own dorms and had “special classes” and tutors.
This is NOT new…but at least with UNC, they finally got on the case and proved it. Hope other schools address the issue too. Athletes should not get a free diploma.
I’m trying to corral back the topic that started out as a news story about North Carolina and academic scandals that could lead to possible NCAA sanctions.
Here’s some news:
Gerald Gurney, president of the Drake Group, whose mission is “to defend academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports,” said the findings should provide fodder for the NCAA to levy one of its most severe charges against UNC: lack of institutional control.
“I can safely say that the scope of the 20-year UNC fraud scandal easily takes the prize for the largest and most nefarious scandal in the history of NCAA enforcement. The depth and breadth of the scheme — involving… Read more »
North Carolina is not a “repeat offender”. The investigation a couple years ago was the same investigation, but this time it was federal and pinpointed actual offenders involved in the scandal.
I gratuate from UNC and their is nuthing rong with us in edukation
we’s studyed hard and sum times made good grades
and sum of the clases that we tooks was really hard …so gives us a brake, ok
Better yet Anon, time for you to come out of the closet. When dishing out the vitriol, be up front with your name.
Cheating asided, I’m very surprised nobody on this thread is critical of the choice of “Afro”-American studies (now usually called African-American studies) as a choice for coursework. You’re pretty much wasting your time, if you’re picking African-American or Women Studies or Religous Studies or Anthropology, etc as a major! Little employment and little bucks. Good luck living in dad’s basement.
Well said, Pac 12 Backer. This news item today about North Carolina been the liveliest one today with lots of interesting dialogue. I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion, but i totally agree with you about worthless academic majors like ethnic studies, anthropology, etc. But to be honest, those departments only exist not because there’s a demand in the marketplace for such majors but because universities are under great pressure to meet faculty “diversity” and “affirmative action” goals and whole departments (a.k.a. diversity police) are set up in university systems to monitor and “encourage” diversity. Those ethnic studies areas are self-selecting and self-reproducing because they only generate graduates who could only possibly find employment teaching ethnic studies.… Read more »
The official reports that have been released say that the only sports implicated in the scandal were football and men’s and women’s basketball. This was clearly an issue for revenue sports. I doubt the swim team/coaches were ever anywhere near this or even knew it was going on.