https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/10/13/unc-off-the-hook-for-academic-fraud/
Same old, same old…
Just makes me glad my kid is at a school
that values giving their student athletes an actual education…very sad…
I agree this is ridiculous and infuriating. But lest all the anger be directed at the NCAA, I believe we should all scorn UNC for its disgraceful behavior throughout this 18 year academic scandal. UNC is where the anger should be directed and focused.
The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill just devalued the degrees of every alumnus/a
This recap gives us an idea of the scandal’s scope…
https://www.dukebasketballreport.com/2017/10/13/16469440/a-pitiful-victory-unc-ncaa-decision/
Deplorable. Really sad day when this kind of stuff is allowed to happen. I’d be looking to start a class action to revoker my tuition expenses if I’d sent a child there and paid full tuition. Geez.
Only in Bizarro NCAA world. So if I am understanding the reasoning correctly, there will be no NCAA sanctions because this form of cheating was available to non-athletes, even when it was clear that it was set up for the benefit of athletes.
“While student-athletes likely benefited from the so-called ‘paper courses’ offered by North Carolina, the information available in the record did not establish that the courses were solely created, offered and maintained as an orchestrated effort to benefit student athletes. … The NCAA’s report said it could not prove that the institution offered these courses only to athletes." (from the NYT)
So it’s ok for an athletic department to institute or at the least work with sympathetic professors/departments to set up a cheating system to skirt academic eligibility rules as long as this form of cheating was extended to non-athletes. If we extend this logic, if boosters also offered some benefits to non-athletes, this would tie the NCAA’s hands?!
Big time money sports in college has become a dirty game because we try to clothe a farm system for the NFL and NBA with the fairy tale dressings of student athletics. Pay the players and give them the option to take courses that may actually benefit them whether they make it to the pro’s or not, including vocational courses. Set up a separate division that allows for direct payment with little or no academic eligibility requirements; revenue share if you want to maintain parity over a larger group of schools and institute salary caps, luxury taxes, etc… like they do in the pro sports to protect “small market” teams.
Some good articles on this point. https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-basketball-is-a-mess-lets-pay-players-1506610449
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-giving-college-athletes-million-dollar-locker-rooms-start-paying-them-1503075169
http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/20841877
Yes, this is yet more proof that the NCAA exists only to protect the revenue streams from football and basketball to schools, and to heck with the kids. It’s disgusting.
One minor quibble, from the reporting I saw, the courses at the heart of this were not set up by the AD, but were regular offerings by this professor in the AFAM Studies Dept. If they were set up by the AD, the NCAA may have had to act here.
And although my wife is a Jayhawk, so his name can’t be safely spoken aloud in our house, good on Roy Williams for at least directing his staff to make sure his players were not being steered into these courses.
I actually agree with the NCAA that this is an academic issue and the accrediting authority needs (or needed) to step in.
I don’t want the NCAA evaluating courses. I don’t want the NCAA deciding which courses are worthwhile and which are not. The NCAA could decide a remedial math class really is okay while an art class or experimental music class was not. It could decide that the physics course at Notre Dame is okay while the one at West Mississippi is not. We do NOT want the NCAA to do evaluate and rank academics.
Every school has a few courses considered easy. UNC had an entire department, and it is up to future employers and grad schools to determine if this applicant has had the education required to get the job/spot in grad school.
@twoinanddone, I get your point, and although there is not the general political will to say so, this situation says something horrifying about the professor, the department and the school generally. But all that aside, if the NCAA can not even impose the most basic academic standards on member schools, then we should all stop pretending it is anything other than what it is - a for profit monopoly that is designed to generate revenue for its members at the expense of the athletes.
If UNC wants to have easy courses open to everyone, it only severely tarnishes there own reputation, and degrades the value of their degree. Sadly there are many universities that have these types of programs.
It’s funny how posters on this site (generally and not aimed at anyone on this thread) so often question the integrity/honesty/transparency of AO’s and coaches of D3’s and Ivies where there is no real money at stake in their statements, public and semi private. Here we have a “blue blood” school and an oversight organization that have huge dollars and reputations at stake, and we are expected to take their word that this was just a case of a rogue professor/department/athletic academic advisors. If you don’t think people high up in the athletic department, admin and/or coaches, weren’t complicit, I have a bridge to sell you. This and the NCAA investigation of the Louisville escort scandal reminds me of the line in one of my favorite movies, “Round up the usual suspects” – usually some poor schmuck assistant to someone.
Sure, the Wainstein report cleared Roy Williams of blame.
But Williams had 167 basketball players take the AFAM courses during his first 11 years back at UNC and 10 of the 15 players on the UNC 2005 national championship basketball team were AFAM majors.
Williams can (and did) claim plausible deniability, but it strains believability.
Whistleblower Mary Willingham says “they all knew”…
It sounds a lot like the Harvey Weisntein case. Look for more sordid UNC details to come…
Of course Williams and the AD knew! Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes in the Tooth Fairy.
And the NCAA just gave every school that wants to cheat a blueprint: set up some kind of academic scam like UNC’s and make sure that each year a few non-athletes avail themselves of it. Easy.
But the NCAA can’t, and they don’t. They set the minimum gpa to continue playing, but does anyone really think that a math class at East Mississippi Community College (from Last Chance U) is the same math class taught at KU or WashU or UNC? We don’t want the NCAA to say whether this engineering program meets standards (we leave that to ABET) or if the art classes at Princeton are as good as the ones at SCAD (we leave that to the accrediting associations). If UNC wants to offer a crappy degree, that’s up to UNC, it’s alums, it’s accrediting authority.
What exactly would the by-law say? Don’t offer crappy classes? Don’t offer classes that don’t have attendance requirements? (most college classes do not have an attendance requirement) Don’t offer classes that only require a paper? Don’t grade papers to allow easy A’s? I think many of the top schools do exactly these things in independent study classes. UNC should have imposed its own standards. UNC failed its students and reputation.
The by-laws might say “Offer classes that actually exist. Don’t offer fake classes.” Let’s not give UNC too much credit by equating what they did with what most other cheating schools do on a regular basis.
Of course UNC knew the AFAM dept/this professor was a joke. And of course the AD’s office took advantage of it. But unlike football, and apparently the women’s basketball team (the team Willingham worked with), Roy Williams didn’t steer his guys to those classes. That’s worth something, imho.
And @twoinanddone, one of the obvious things the NCAA could do would be to audit classes to make sure they meet basic academic standards. We are not talking about deciding whether a history class at Ohio State is equivalent to a history class at Duke. But doing so would cost money and potentially embarrass member schools.
I disagree. I don’t want the NCAA judging the educational value of any class. They already screw up determining if an athlete got too much help writing a paper or how tutoring must be done. Auditing classes and determining if they are up to whose academic standards? They don’t even do that for high school and leave it up to the school districts to decide who gets a diploma and who doesn’t. They do have an ACT/SAT minimum but really, is that a standard we want to look to?
I think one of the best decisions the NCAA made was when they changed the rules about feeding athletes. The NCAA said they weren’t going to get into defining what was a meal and the cost of meals, and was it fair. If some schools had steaks and others had only hot dogs, that was up to the school.
You are right. The NCAA screws up a lot. And they regulate the most inane things, like the size of the envelopes used to send recruiting materials. But on the things that matter, like helping to ensure that the kids who feed the beast get something meaningful in exchange for their blood, sweat and tears, they throw up their hands and say sorry, nothing we can do. It’s a joke.
I agree with @turnandrake: How is this not a wink wink, nudge nudge guide to schools on how to set up a bulletproof “academic” program that fully benefits the athletic programs but can’t be touched by the NCAA? Crazy.
Any college can offer underwater basket weaving as a major if they can get it approved by their accrediting body, and the NCAA allows students to major in anything offered by the school.
When we were touring colleges a few years ago, I couldn’t believe how often I heard “If you can’t find the major you want, we’ll let you design your own! You pick the classes you think you need.” Is the NCAA going to review all those ‘classes’ too, or what makes a major course of study? Is the NCAA going to determine that majoring in Black Studies or Chicano Studies isn’t good enough even though the State U will give that degree to a non-athlete? Will the NCAA find that the Black Studies major is fine at Harvard but not at Ohio State? Will the NCAA determine the intro math class at West Florida should really be a remedial class and not allow credit to be given to players while non-athletes get credit?
Aren’t those decisions for the accrediting bodies?
Joe Nocera’s piece at Bloomberg is a good read on this. @twoinanddone , the NCAA’s mission is “student first, athlete second”. How does this ruling possibly align with that and if they want to be true to their mission, how do they avoid the sort of class validation that you described above? Not trying to be argumentative and not directing that at you specifically.