<p>They said 3100 students were involved, about half of them athletes.</p>
<p>This is from the press release:
</p>
<p>On page 35 we find this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So there were 2097 students in the “lecture” paper classes-- classes which didn’t have any lectures.</p>
<p>Then there were 2090 students in AFAM independent study classes. “Most” of them were phonies, so the report is taking half of them, 1045.</p>
<p>But what confuses me is why those two numbers are being added together, if they are students and not enrollments. Presumably some of the dishonest students in the “lecture” classes would also take the phony independent study classes.</p>
<p>No I’m sure you are right. But enrollments refers to the number in the actual class. I can’t pull the cites. It’s frustrating. It’s an awful report. Seriously. And Weinstein is an honorable man, as is Folt.who was specifically chosen to clean up this entire mess. The issue may be,though, that the people involved are gone. It’s complicated. The fixes are good so far I think, though. I’m pleased with Folt , though there are those who think she shouldn’t have done this after the governor s investigations. </p>
<p>This was posted in response to the previous post. Fwiw</p>
<p>I don’t think the report is bad. I think it’s good, because it explains things clearly.</p>
<p>It’s my impression that Chancellor Folt is the new broom who is sweeping clean. Good for her.</p>
<p>Here’s some more bad news about the basketball team. On the 2004-2005 championship team, 10 of the 15 players were AFAM majors. But it turns out, student-athletes were not well represented in actual AFAM classes with real professors and real work, only in phony AFAM classes. So, essentially, those 10 students majored in not going to class or doing any work.</p>
<p>Responding to
Art and dance require a lot of reading. While there are performance/studio courses, those only form a part of the major and even those require reading. In addition, they require putting a lot of time in rehearsal or studio, as much as what athletes spend in conditioning and practice. Strictly speaking, the classes that require the least reading are the lab-based science classes, where labs replace the reading load in terms of time commitment. That is not a synonym for easy, far from it, as problem sets and lab experiments tend to be among the most difficult to master (ask any engineering major). According to research, the classes that require a combination of the least writing, the least reading, and the least time spent on homework/lab, are business classes. However even majoring in business requires skills someone with a CR score below 400 can’t handle (and even in the 400 to 500 range, that isn’t easy.)</p>
<p>Right. CF. For me, reading the report is pretty awful. I care. But that’s just me. I was in favor of getting Folt in </p>
<p>The afam major wasn’t mostly those classes. Not an excuse, just a statement. The ncaa has the transcripts of the 2005 team and has cleared the gpa minus those classes. I’m.not sure that matters morally, but it matters technically. View</p>
<p>I’m pretty shocked by the number of non athletes taking those classes. But that’s just me</p>
<p>But one thing I want to say, not in defense of nc athletic s, but the African-American diaspora studies department, is that Crowder was a small part of that dept. The department was created in the late eighties in response to federal pressure to integrate the university further and more meaningfully. It’s a valid subject and the major is as important as European history. These paper classes have damaged it, but it’s important to not just label the whole major that way. </p>
<p>Just my opinioon</p>
<p>This is a failure of administrative oversight. You can’t blame students for enrolling in classes they thought were valid. This is a failure of those in charge, including the deans, who knew something might be wrong, but were a afraid to ask questions because they were afraid it would look “racist” It’s easy to blame the African-American athletes. But they aren’t in charge of classes and curriculums. </p>
<p>These administrators should all be fired. But we have to be careful. This whole thing is also a story about race. The underlying message: admission standards need to go up because poor rural kids (African-American here, by the way), cannot handle the work. </p>
<p>This is a story, also, about the failure of k-12 education in poorer parts of the country, a story about accidents of birth and how we are going to level the playing field. It’s a lot more than the story of the African American athlete. </p>
<p>poetgrl, do you think that commenters here are blaming the African American students? I certainly don’t think so.</p>
<p>What I really hate about this scandal (which I am sure is representative of other similar situations, maybe not so blatant, with better covering of tracks) is that it so cynically exploits gifted athletes who were not educated in their home schools during the K-12 years. They are being used, mislabeled as “student athletes,” and “graduated” with 2.0 averages and no education after 4 or 5 years of “eligibility,” during which they are fed, housed, and used to raise money for their colleges by playing their sports for free.</p>
<p>@oldmom4896. I abhor this also! I can’t tell you how deeply troubled I am by this. I am glad that one outcome of this investigation is that all athletes can now return or take their time to finish their degree at unc expense. This is good. It makes us look.at things more closely. But the exploitation of athletes must end. </p>
<p>Some of the new policies address this really well. Some of the fixes need to be made at thek-12 level. And this relates to an issue we have nationwide in how we fund education, in my opinion. </p>
<p>All that said, African-American diaspora studies is important. And I want to see it cleaned up and taught well, as many of the classes were. </p>
<p>Sorry Poetgrl, I can’t go that far with you because it’s more than likely that many of the athletes were willingly complicit. Years ago I got the opportunity to meet Ed Tapscott, who was the head coach at American University, and later an executive with the NBA. Tapscott described the D1 athletics industry essentially as an exploitative cesspool but one where Black athletes willingly endure their exploitation. People should also listen to Len Elmore, one of the top 50 All Time ACC basketball players, Harvard Law graduate and member of the NCAA Knight Commission. He has been a thoughtful pundit regarding sports and race.</p>
<p>And there’s your answer @oldmom4896. Yes. I believe some blame the students </p>
<p>LakeWashington, do you think it’s a level playing field, poor 17-year-old students mostly with uneducated parents in crappy high schools bargaining with university (the farm team for the pros and the big bucks!) coaches?</p>
<p>I don’t.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Math courses require very little reading and writing if you are counting numbers of pages. But reading one page of Rudin’s Principles of Mathematical Analysis and writing up a one page solution to a problem on that subject can be more difficult and time consuming than reading dozens of pages of something else and writing a multi-page paper on that something else.</p>
<p>^that’s what I was saying…
ie., students who can’t read couldn’t do them… and it’d still require as much time as reading 50 pages…</p>
<p>It seems to me the athletes were complicit only in that they followed instructions from those in authority. Sports seems to me like the military. You aren’t supposed to question authority figures and it is too much to expect of most participants in either group, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds trying to better their circumstances including, frequently, the circumstances of their nuclear or extended families. Flouting authority is mainly a luxury of the privileged or the criminal class. Sometimes those classes overlap. Not always. jmho</p>
<p>Would you rather the schools not recruit these athletes, just reject them without giving them a chance at college? LeBron James went straight to the NBA, but he could read and write, just didn’t think college was worth it.</p>
<p>I would like the NCAA rules to be enforced for admissions. If the best athletes can’t attend college because they can’t qualify academically, so be it. The NCAA has rules against schools ‘grooming’ k-12 students for their teams (like in the Blind Side), but that could be the best way to educate and prepare student athletes. Rich parents can send their kids to ski academy high schools or tennis academies, but urban high schools that concentrate on sports are criticized.</p>
<p>From the humor columnist at the New Yorker magazine, Andy Borowitz:</p>
<p>U.N.C. Boosters Outraged That Some Athletes Took Real Classes
<a href=“U.N.C. Boosters Outraged That Some Athletes Took Real Classes | The New Yorker”>U.N.C. Boosters Outraged That Some Athletes Took Real Classes | The New Yorker;
<p>Easy fix: ban all sports at UNC for 5 years. Decades of cheating at this sports-first university needs a complete reboot. Basketball isn’t everything. </p>
<p>More from the New Yorker blog, on a more serious vein:
The Price of Eligibility at U.N.C.
<a href=“The Price of Academic Eligibility at U.N.C. - The New Yorker | The New Yorker”>The Price of Academic Eligibility at U.N.C. - The New Yorker | The New Yorker;