The University of North Carolina is in hot water following the results of an independent investigation which detail the school's on-going academic fraud involving students and student-athletes. Assembled by former Department of Justice official Kenneth Wainstein, the investigation's report uncovers the university's complicity in "deficient instruction" and unfairly awarded "high grades that often had little relationship to the quality of [a student's] work." The number of students involved is "over 3,100", 47.4 percent of which were student athletes. Amazingly, this conduct had been going on since 1991.
For those unfamiliar with the specifics of the situation, UNC's academic practices became a target for scrutiny in 2011, when inconsistencies on a transcript from former football player Marvin Austin revealed spurious practices within the university's academic department. Simply put, athletes were getting easy A's from certain professors associated with the school's Department of African and Afro-American Studies, namely Debby Crowder (now retired) and former department head Julius Nyang'oro, who resigned from his post in 2011. Since this revelation, the spotlight on UNC has only become more intense, as former players have corroborated details from the original report, including former UNC star Rashad McCants, who won a national championship with the men's basketball team in 2005.
According to the independent investigation, 50.9 percent of the student-athletes associated with the AFAM department's "paper classes" were football players. 12.2 percent were basketball players. In these classes, athletes were rarely asked to meet with their instructor, and were only required to submit one research paper for the entire semester. Oftentimes, their paper was given an A or high B grade, regardless of its academic rigor.
Many athletes were even urged to take these classes, as the professors worked with counselors to steer players into easy courses. Some professors even consulted counselors about what grades they should award certain players, depending on how badly they needed a high grade.
Even worse, administrators and faculty members around UNC were at least partially aware of what was taking place within the AFAM department. Unfortunately, little action was taken to mitigate the effects of this deeply-ingrained corruption. Over the course of this entire scandal, 329 students used a paper class to receive a passing GPA for a semester. 81 of those students needed paper classes just so they could graduate. However, the amount of actual learning that took place throughout their education was clearly minimal.
As a result of this unscrupulous conduct, the university has fired or disciplined nine different members of its academic department. However, don't think for a second that this is where UNC's punishment will end. The NCAA has yet to weigh-in on the matter, and if the organization is at all interested in upholding the already questionable integrity of its "student-athlete" moniker, then they should be readying themselves to lay the fucking hammer down.
[via Deadspin]
