U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

Parents Forum
381

<p>I’m not surprised by this story, and I expect this is happening at other schools.</p>

<p>Attendance does not have to be required in a college class. A single paper can be the only graded item for a class. Part of the reason this issue was discovered was a plagiarism check of a final paper, so clearly there was a paper.</p>

<p>Grading can be done by graduate students or staff members. We have a lab manager, who orders chemicals and so on, who teaches a class, and does not have the credentials to do so. We also had a professor hire his son to teach, who only had a BS degree (most four-year colleges including ours require a PhD to teach independently). The professor was reprimanded, not officially but in words, but his son was left teaching the class for the full semester.</p>

<p>Some of our professors are paid fully for classes they attend once and leave to a grad student to teach for the rest of the time.</p>

<p>This is gaining a lot of attention because student athletes are involved. I am still trying to understand what the difference is between this and a class where no attendance is taken and one paper is required as the end product, and the professor grades randomly. Which happens at many colleges.</p>

<p>My questions:

  • Did the athletic department start this, or did the AFAM department start this?
  • Did the chair of the AFAM department do this mostly for financial gain (paid to teach when no in-person class was run)?
  • Did the secretary of the AFAM department do this because of a combination of being able to (department secretaries are VERY powerful at most universities) and because she felt sorry for student athletes?
  • If the athletic department did start this, is this worse or better than protecting a child rapist?</p>

<p>You must admit that affirmative action at the Ivies is far different from affirmative action at schools with much lower average SAT scores. If your average student has 1000 M + CR, would you accept URM students who have 800 CR + M? How capable of college-level work is a student who had 800 CR + M?</p>

<p>If you then compound it with athletics, that the students “didn’t have the time in HS to study for the SAT”, how low can you go on SAT scores? Then, how much is the athletic department beholden to players to get them a degree, rather than an education.</p>

<p>I don’t have sympathy for the devil, but I can see how a combination of local control (department secretaries who decide life and death for students) and the “needs” of the athletic department to keep their players at the college led to this.</p>

<p>On that note, if your child is set on their major, they should befriend or at the very least not antagonize their department’s secretary. At most colleges, she can get you into a class that is full or prevent you from registering for a class that is not full. At some colleges, she can add a class and find someone to teach it, if she likes the person asking to add it. The chair may or may not have this level of control, but the department secretary often works directly with the registrar, and can make or break students.</p>

382

<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, but for those who are in the dark about academic standards for NCAA division one in general, the “sliding scale” tables in the following link will give you a frame of reference for what we are dealing with. Things vary from school to school and from sport to sport, but, to me, this scale speaks volumes about how far down the road the horse is from the barn. </p>

<p><a href=“http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/eligibility_center/Quick_Reference_Sheet.pdf”>http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/eligibility_center/Quick_Reference_Sheet.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Upper level D1 programs in football and basketball are replete with students who are not prepared for college. You can see it from the ranges on the chart. </p>

<p>For the Ivy’s and other elite institutions, the biggest issue they have is finding that narrow overlap of the Ven diagram sort that contains the group of athletes who are competitive at the D1 level they aspire to, and who are able and willing to do the academic work at the school. For even a small-roster sport, its not unusual for ambitious coaches at the upper-tier schools(top 10-15) to send out transcript requests to several hundred elite athletes to come up with a final “coaches preferred list” from which they can get seven or eight admissions. </p>

383

<p>

Would you care to specify those “many colleges” where professors grade randomly? Have I been wasting time these past 25 years?<br>

Now you claim the secretary can get you in a class or prevent you from registering at “most colleges.” I would like to see the evidence. </p>

384

<p>From another study by Espenshade</p>

<p>

[quote]
African-American applicants receive the equivalent of 230 extra SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), and being Hispanic is worth an additional 185 SAT points. Other things equal, recruited athletes gain an admission bonus worth 200 points, while the preference for legacy candidates is worth 160 points.</p>

385

<p>Here are some anecdotes to buttress @dadx’s point:

<a href=“Stanford vs. Duke basketball: The difference in admissions standards - College Hotline”>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2008/11/05/stanford-vs-duke-basketball-the-difference-in-admissions-standards/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

386

<p>“Athletes at all schools, including Duke, are taking different classes than their counterparts.”</p>

<p>If you are talking about comparing Mechanical Engineering student athletes at Duke to non-athlete History majors then this statement is true. However pre-med student athletes at Duke that have been admitted to medical school would be expected to have taken similar courses as non-athlete pre-meds.</p>

387

<p>SACs re-accredits each school every 10 years. I would have a fraud investigation be part of this process. </p>

388

<p>The NCAA, the SAC, all other “regulatory” bodies need to investigate clustering at ALL NCAA D1 schools. This entire situation at UNC came out because of self reporting and self investigation. All schools need to be investigated for clustering, and then changes need to be made.</p>

<p>The NCAA will run from this. What that investigation would reveal would bring the end of amatuer revenue athletics. </p>

<p>Sad but true. </p>

389

<p>@Swimkidsdad: The results you quote in 383 are from the same study I quoted in 379. After quoting the SAT results the authors acknowledged that taking GPA data into account would show that the benefit that athletes get is larger than the 200 point SAT bump whereas the benefit to legacies is smaller than the 160 point estimate. </p>

390

<p>Look. Watch the 30 in 30 documentary Youngstown Boys.</p>

<p>It tells the story of how badly the NCAA wants to keep these revenue athletes as indentured servants. It has got NOTHING to do with the student and everything to do with the money… that they make sure the kids can’t touch. It’s a travesty.</p>

391

<p>"I have discussed this in the past but in general for elite universities such as Harvard studies by Thomas Espenshade have shown that the admission boost given to legacies is almost identical to the admission boost given to athletes. In addition there are plenty of Ivy League football players that have GPA and SAT scores that are similar to non-athletes. "</p>

<p>His studies and others are pretty clear. The biggest admissions preference in the Ivies is for AA applicants. Second best is athletes. Third best is Hispanic and legacy.</p>

<p>The Ivies have a complex mathematical Academic Index system to keep the breaks given to athletes under control and regulated between the schools. So there’s a limit to how far the Ivies can go.</p>

<p>But the fact is that they give very big academic breaks to athletes. And the breaks get bigger as the player gets better. To counter-balance a star for the AI math, the teams will often recruit high stat bench warmers. </p>

<p>So the Ivies have cleaner hands on this than most. But still pretty striking how many of their precious seats they give out to academically less qualified students just so they can field competitive teams. So it is the same disease as in the classic football factories. But just a milder strain.</p>

392

<p>Most colleges are not Ivies, and are far from it. If you include CCs, there are many sub-par colleges where administrative assistants have a lot of pull. I have attended, worked at, or know people who have worked at tens of colleges.</p>

<p>I will stand by that my experience has been that the department secretary who acts as the assistant to the chair has far more power than most people at your average not your top university. If you say there are 200 or 300 top universities, I’ll say yes, but there are over 4,000 two-year and four-year colleges in the US so that is many who do not have the capacity to hire a person with administration skills and a four-year degree to be the assistant to the department chair.</p>

<p>The college I work at has national name recognition to some extent, and would be in that top 300 colleges in the US. The department chairs are elected every two years, and they are always full-time professors usually with heavy grant responsibilities. They do absolutely no administration beyond signing what they are forced to sign. The assistant to the chair, also known as the department secretary, has all the power and all the responsibility. The people elected to the chair position often feel pushed into it as a career builder and cannot wait to get out of it. The only ones who really like it do even less than average.</p>

<p>My point was that the lady in the article, the department secretary, who “made up classes” and “graded papers” is not doing anything that many (I did not say most though) other department secretaries have the power to do. These people are not trained in ethics, or bound by any specific ethical code, yet they often have more control over our kids than many of the professors do (because they have control over their entire program if your child is that major). </p>

<p>I also said " a class where no attendance is taken and one paper is required as the end product, and the professor grades randomly." I did not say that ALL classes at any college is like that. I do know of at least three classes like that, one which is required and well-attended by many students but especially athletes and is often taught by a staff member not a professor, at my university. “randomly” means yeah, the old toss 'em down the stairs - A for effort grading system. That’s what happens when you have tenure and a disillusioned workforce.</p>

<p>YMMV, this is my experience. I do not have scientific data to back this us, and no duh that if your child is at HYPSM or even a top college of the hundreds of top colleges in the US, things might be different. They are as I state where I work and other colleges in my area (mostly state schools granted). I never said “MOST” I said “many”. </p>

<p>At the Ivy I attended, there were classes with no homework that required attendance and classwork only. There were many athletes in the one class I took like that, Sculpture. There were art majors who took the class, and they were graded differently than the rest of us. I got a B with basically no art training at all.</p>

<p>Yes, it is terrible and all, this specific case regarding the AFAM department and athletics, but don’t act like 100% of professors at 100% of colleges all require college-level ability and dedication to get an A. </p>

<p>You can see I don’t value the average college education very much, so perhaps most people would see me as elitist.</p>

393

<p>Regarding athlete vs. legacy admissions at Harvard, this for the class of 2018. Caveats are that only 70% of the class responded, and athlete scores are for all athletes, not just revenue sports. 11% of respondents were recruited athletes.</p>

<ul>
<li>average non-recruited athlete SAT score: 2256</li>
<li><p>average recruited athlete SAT score: 2068.4 (187.6 points lower)</p></li>
<li><p>average non-legacy SAT score: 2237.2</p></li>
<li><p>average legacy SAT score: 2296.1 (58.9 points higher)</p></li>
</ul>

<p>I suspect relatively few athletes are legacies, thus the non-legacy score likely includes most athletes, but even then, it’s not enough to explain the legacy/non legacy discrepancy. On the face of it, it seems that when it comes to SAT scores, applying as an athlete offers a significant boost, applying as a legacy, perhaps none at all.</p>

<p>Source: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2018 By the Numbers”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

394

<p>That’s good data:</p>

<p>Overall average SAT at Harvard: 2228
Latino 2201.2
Black/AA: 2157.6
Native American/Alaskan 2104
Recruited Athlete 2068.4 </p>

395

<p>

</p>

<p>I would interpret this as meaning that for a legacy a big SAT score alone, absent all the other bells and whistles of an application, is likely to be enough.</p>

396

<p>some of the legacies are also athletic walk-ons who maybe received some level of support from the coach.
Also note that Harvard is not the most academically demanding Ivy for their athletic recruits.</p>

397

<p>Outside of setting min stds, that are actually approved by the school reps, the NCAA is not really involved in student eligibility or admissions. That is up to each school. So the NCAA has little direct interest in keeping "indentured. Poetgrl, if were really treated as you suggest, why are most student athletes so happy and working so hard to get there?? You think the word would get out. . </p>

398

<p>The data from post #392 is self-reported data. The data itself cannot be verified and 30% of the non-responders could come from one group. It is curios that the Crimson had to rely on self-reported data and did not report data from the admissions office. The Espenshade data set is much better. He will not confirm which schools the data came from, however given the fact that he was from the Ivy League and other characteristics of the data (i.e. the low overall admission rate) it is likely that this data is from the dataset used to calculate the academic index( i. e. it came from Ivy League schools).</p>

399

<p>Please Barrons. If the students were so happy with the fact that they have to play football for free for the NCAA billionaire boys club, they would hardly be trying to unionize in the B1G or suing the NCAA. The football players play for the NCAA because they have to play there for three years before they are allowed to go pro. The basketball players play for the NCAA for a year for the same reason. Let’s not mistake going along with the program for being happy to get there. They aren’t working so hard to get to the NCAA, Barrons. They are working hard to get through the NCAA. And the fact is that many of them are not great students and have no other path available. They are forced to go to school in order to get to the NFL. It’s the only path. But we ought to at least deal with them honestly and offer them a useful education. This game that is being played all over the NCAA is not about the students, and yet they get “blamed” for it when they have no other choice. </p>

400

<p>@Swimkidsdad - this survey was sent to all entering freshman. It is certainly self-reported, but it’s the self-reported data from over 2/3 of the Harvard Class of 2018. If you would like, I can clarify whether the request to answer this survey came directly from Harvard College, or whether The Crimson was given contact information for all entering freshman in order to send the survey request.</p>

<p>There seems to be little doubt the Espenshade data is accurate, but it’s from 1997 and is the aggregate of data from “three private research universities that represent the top tier of American higher education” - which may or may not have included Harvard. Data from three unnamed universities 16 years ago seems much less likely to be an accurate reflection of the current situation at Harvard than a current (anonymous) survey of the freshman class.</p>