'Cheated' Out Of An Education: Book Replays UNC's Student-Athlete Scandal

March Madness is college basketball’s annual shining moment, and few schools have shone as bright or as long as the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels have been in 18 Final Fours and won the national championship five times, most recently in 2009.

But today, UNC’s athletics are also known for something else entirely: a massive academic fraud scheme. In Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports, UNC history professor Jay Smith and Mary Willingham, who worked with UNC’s athletes for as a learning specialist, detail the scheme and attempts to cover it up.

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/23/394884826/cheated-out-of-an-education-book-replays-unc-s-student-athlete-scandal

I am patiently waiting for the NCAA to take some action in this case. Syracuse got sanctioned but good for violations that were piddly compared to what has been going on at UNC.

While what the U (or whomever brought this about) did is terrible, I don’t feel I should buy a book from someone who participated in the practice. Nor do I feel sorry for the students who are now trying to sue the university. They didn’t have to take part in the practice either. There must have been some (a good portion?) of students who didn’t take sham classes. FWIW I think the U should be hammered. I still believe in the first word of student athlete.

Cheated’ Out Of An Education - are the kids who were denied UNC admission because their places were occupied by these athletes. Common, these athletes knew perfectly well that the whole “education” was a scam.

@californiaaa I think the draw of a school like UNC is somewhat dependent on it’s sports legacy. It’s endowments too. Just my opinion, YMMV

So you think that 17-year-olds in crappy high schools, first-generation college students, knew all about it in advance as they and their parents did the recruitment dance with coaches?

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a student athlete - especially in the big $$$ sports. What they are instead are indentured servants. This notion that they are getting an education in return for their work on the athletic field is BS.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/darrenheitner/2012/07/25/national-letter-of-indenture-why-college-athletes-are-similar-to-indentured-servants-of-colonial-times/

I would not say that there are no student-athletes who take academics seriously. It may be that, in high profile sports, such student-athletes are in the minority of student-athletes, but they are not non-existent. Here are some examples:

http://engineering.berkeley.edu/2010/12/uncommon-every-way-engineers-intercollegiate-sports
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/richard-fisher/50/397/463
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/sati-houston/32/49b/b2a
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/dustin-muhn-ms-pe/20/a23/11b

^ Some may indeed get an education (there are always exceptions to every rule) but that does not make them any less an indentured servant to the university. My son has a job on his college campus but he doesn’t work for the college for free - he receives a paycheck every two weeks and it doesn’t matter that the college has also given him a large scholarship to be able to attend. He is also not required to work for the college to keep his scholarship.

The student athlete system is broken. If I were king of the NCAA for a day, I would institute a few rules -

  1. Athletic scholarships cannot be offered until after the student has been accepted through the normal process. Academic scholarships are basically done this way, so why not the athletic ones.
  2. An athletic scholarship is permanent. As long as the student is in good standing with the university, then they get to keep attending - injuries are the key issue here.
  3. The head coach will be paid no more than one (maybe 2-3) standard deviation greater than the average department head salary.
  4. Practice is a work-study job, paid by the hour.

There are not perfect, but they would send the message that the kids are students.

Labor is often compensated for what it is worth. If the “student-athlete” feels entitled to more than what he is given, another one will rise to take his place on the court or the field, emilybee.

^ that doesn’t make it right. If one looks at what the schools earn by from these “laborers” it is outright exploitation.

They’re getting an opportunity they may have never otherwise had. These student-athletes often get free room and board and even a stipend. How would you feel about student-researchers who bring multi-million dollar contracts to research universities getting paid? They’re far, far, far more deserving than any footballer–without them, the universities would scarcely have the reputations they have today, for a university is a sum of its students.

Furthermore, how do you compensate the football team versus the women’s field hockey team and not cross the provisions of Title IX? Is it about how many people attend the games? Is it about who “works harder”? How do you compensate the value of the different positions?

Why are many colleges all about sports, when it ought to be about learning?

There would probably have to be plenty of extra rules to avoid having colleges game “the normal [admission] process” with respect to athletes. For example, if the college has a holistic review process where national level achievement in sports happens to be very heavily weighted, that can admit athletes of marginal academic credentials under “the normal process”. Also, if the college’s normal admission academic standards happen to match the NCAA minimum academic standards (or are lower), then the college need not make any special admission provision for athletes (which is true today).

ucbalumus, yes there would be loopholes to close and details work out. The intent was to completely separate the sport recruiting from the admissions process, and the admissions decisions are done without any knowledge of the athletic potential of the student.

That may not be realistic at any school which considers extracurriculars, since sports is a common extracurricular. An applicant who won a national championship in a sport as an extracurricular would certainly stand out in that respect, even in the absence of athletic recruiting.

If an athlete gets $10/hr (like most work study students) x 20 hrs/wk x 15 weeks in the semester, that’s $3000 per semester. My daughter’s scholarship is more than double that, and she doesn’t have a particularly generous award. She’d rather play than wipe tables or check out library books, so why can’t she?

Students do have a minimum requirement to be accepted. No, the student with a 2.5 and ACT is not going to Yale, but state flagships do admit non-athletes with lower stats because it is the mission of those schools to educate their citizens.

When I was in college a long time ago a football player at Oklahoma iirc who happened to be a business major did a study of his teammates and found out that on a per hour basis, their compensation in terms of the athletic scholarship was less than minimum wage. That does not even take in to consideration the money the schools make off of merchandising. Yes, there are sports that don’t have the time commitment football does, but a scholarship is far from a free ride. Particularly when you consider the level of control the academic advisors in the athletic department will exert over an athlete’s schedule.

As far as admissions standards, being a recruitable athlete is quantitatively different than most other extra curriculars. The time and discipline required to become among the very best at a given endeavor, whether that is athletics or writing software should mean more than being president of model UN or Key Club treasurer. That said, I personally know a kid at Northwestern who was admitted with a 19 ACT and not a terribly impressive GPA. So yes, it would be preferable if schools at least made a nod to admitting athletes who were rough equivalents stats wise to the general student population.