Tar Heels can't cover their tracks: 20+ years of academic dishonesty

[dbadefense1990]

This is far worse than any of the Ohio State tattoos or Manziel/Winston autographs. This is insane. This isn't even isolated to JUST the athletic side.

Worse than Pedo State?

Worse than Miami BoatHoes?

/startsarcasm

Even worse than *gasp* USC???!!!

/endsarcasm

[CDixonDesign]

This is an academic issue that involved student athletes, not the other way around. There's no way the NCAA imposes any penalties beyond what has already been handed down prior to now.

As for the Basketball program, Roy became uncomfortable with the cluster of his kids being in those African American Studies in 2007 and steered his players away from them. If anything, Roy comes out on the high end of this. The football end, not so much.

[Cosmic]

The article isn't fresh on my mind right now, so forgive me if I misstep... but there was a concerted effort to steer athletes towards these classes with varying levels of fakeness. I can't imagine the NCAA will be OK with that just because there were also non-athletes involved, too. I think if the NCAA doesn't hand out stiff penalties, it's because it's UNC, not because it isn't worthy of punishment.

The math does not look good. Roughly 50% of the students involved were athletes. Athletes can't make up more than 2-3% of the total student population at a school like that. That's a whole lot of standard deviations away from what you would expect if it were truly just a problem on the academic side of things.

[dfwabel]

The article isn't fresh on my mind right now, so forgive me if I misstep... but there was a concerted effort to steer athletes towards these classes with varying levels of fakeness. I can't imagine the NCAA will be OK with that just because there were also non-athletes involved, too. I think if the NCAA doesn't hand out stiff penalties, it's because it's UNC, not because it isn't worthy of punishment.

The math does not look good. Roughly 50% of the students involved were athletes. Athletes can't make up more than 2-3% of the total student population at a school like that. That's a whole lot of standard deviations away from what you would expect if it were truly just a problem on the academic side of things.

In phone now, but...

There was the effort of three to four academic support staff to place students "at risk" into the as what this last report terms, "paper classes".

The Greek system, mostly fraternities, caught on to the system via word of mouth and accounted for 30% of the enrollees too.

[JTernup]

I think this is worthy of the death penalty and a loss of accreditation at this point. Whether other schools have done this or not, UNC needs to be made an example of to make sure this type of thing never happens again at a major university.

[Cosmic]

A loss of accreditation would basically destroy the university... I don't believe you can get federal aid for non-accredited schools. I don't think they should do that, but they should do whatever slightly less than that is.

[Cosmic]

The article isn't fresh on my mind right now, so forgive me if I misstep... but there was a concerted effort to steer athletes towards these classes with varying levels of fakeness. I can't imagine the NCAA will be OK with that just because there were also non-athletes involved, too. I think if the NCAA doesn't hand out stiff penalties, it's because it's UNC, not because it isn't worthy of punishment.

The math does not look good. Roughly 50% of the students involved were athletes. Athletes can't make up more than 2-3% of the total student population at a school like that. That's a whole lot of standard deviations away from what you would expect if it were truly just a problem on the academic side of things.

In phone now, but...

There was the effort of three to four academic support staff to place students "at risk" into the as what this last report terms, "paper classes".

The Greek system, mostly fraternities, caught on to the system via word of mouth and accounted for 30% of the enrollees too.

I'm sure the Greeks are overrepresented, too... those frats should be suspended. Make no mistake, though, this is an athletics problem, as well. UNC has about 30,000 students. If we say that 3% are athletes, that's about 900 athletes (I have to imagine that's pretty generous). That means that athletes are represented in this scandal at least 15x beyond their makeup of the general student population... likely this is really 25x-30x or more. It doesn't matter that the football coach wasn't orchestrating it... it's an athletics problem. Then there's this in that article in the OP: "After her retirement in 2009, Nyang'oro met requests from football counselors to continue the sham classes and graded papers "with an eye to boosting" a student's grade-point average, according to the report. He stepped down in 2011 as questions were raised."

Don't believe me? Here's what the Chancellor of the university said: '"I think it's very clear that this is an academic, an athletic and a university problem," Folt said.'

The federal government is not going to get involved. It'd cost more to litigate and return the dollars back to the government than what the grants and aid cost.

I don't think it's likely that they will, but I do think there's an avenue for them to do it. How often does criminal prosecution recoup the damage done? The government prosecutes criminals to punish the criminals and to deter others from doing the same, not to balance the books. Edit: In a roundabout way, it's billing the government for services that you never performed... it's fraud.

Edit: And every university has a compliance office to monitor rules violations. UNC's office has seven people whose sole responsibility is to keep track of these sorts of things: athletes' GPAs, academic progress, financial aid, boosters, etc. They should have seen this happening.

And for lolz: The link from UNC's compliance office page to the NCAA's policy on "Academic and Social Achievement" leads to a 404- Not Found error.

[FiddySicks]

A loss of accreditation would basically destroy the university... I don't believe you can get federal aid for non-accredited schools. I don't think they should do that, but they should do whatever slightly less than that is.

I'd say that a suspension of their accreditation for a year or two would probably be merited at this point. You're right, it would certainly be an absolute death blow for them. But with the amount of money people pour into higher education, and the amount of money students have to pay back to the federal government once they finish their degrees, they better do all they can to offer a true, unadulterated educational experience. I think two or three years of lost enrollment would send an enormous message to every school that does this. Permanently knocking the prestige out of a school like North Carolina would be huge, and I honestly feel kinda necessary at this point.

[Norva]

I feel bad for all the students there who have gotten degrees legitimately over the past 18 years. Hopefully the reputation hit doesn't hurt them much.

[DnBronc]

Worse than Pedo State?

Nothing is worse than that. Not even UCLA stealing championships in the 60's and 70's because of Sam Gilbert (and an easy tourney draw) was worse than that. What Steve Alford did with Pierre Pierce isn't even worse than that.

[rams80]

If you're waiting for something bad to happen to UNC's accreditation, I reiterate...Liberty, which tells its students man walked with the dinosaurs 6000 years ago and also runs what amounts to an online for-profit school in terms of enrollment, is at the highest level of accreditation.

[dfwabel]

The article isn't fresh on my mind right now, so forgive me if I misstep... but there was a concerted effort to steer athletes towards these classes with varying levels of fakeness. I can't imagine the NCAA will be OK with that just because there were also non-athletes involved, too. I think if the NCAA doesn't hand out stiff penalties, it's because it's UNC, not because it isn't worthy of punishment.

The math does not look good. Roughly 50% of the students involved were athletes. Athletes can't make up more than 2-3% of the total student population at a school like that. That's a whole lot of standard deviations away from what you would expect if it were truly just a problem on the academic side of things.

In phone now, but...

There was the effort of three to four academic support staff to place students "at risk" into the as what this last report terms, "paper classes".

The Greek system, mostly fraternities, caught on to the system via word of mouth and accounted for 30% of the enrollees too.

I'm sure the Greeks are overrepresented, too... those frats should be suspended. Make no mistake, though, this is an athletics problem, as well. UNC has about 30,000 students. If we say that 3% are athletes, that's about 900 athletes (I have to imagine that's pretty generous). That means that athletes are represented in this scandal at least 15x beyond their makeup of the general student population... likely this is really 25x-30x or more. It doesn't matter that the football coach wasn't orchestrating it... it's an athletics problem. Then there's this in that article in the OP: "After her retirement in 2009, Nyang'oro met requests from football counselors to continue the sham classes and graded papers "with an eye to boosting" a student's grade-point average, according to the report. He stepped down in 2011 as questions were raised."

Don't believe me? Here's what the Chancellor of the university said: '"I think it's very clear that this is an academic, an athletic and a university problem," Folt said.'

The federal government is not going to get involved. It'd cost more to litigate and return the dollars back to the government than what the grants and aid cost.

I don't think it's likely that they will, but I do think there's an avenue for them to do it. How often does criminal prosecution recoup the damage done? The government prosecutes criminals to punish the criminals and to deter others from doing the same, not to balance the books. Edit: In a roundabout way, it's billing the government for services that you never performed... it's fraud.

Edit: And every university has a compliance office to monitor rules violations. UNC's office has seven people whose sole responsibility is to keep track of these sorts of things: athletes' GPAs, academic progress, financial aid, boosters, etc. They should have seen this happening.

And for lolz: The link from UNC's compliance office page to the NCAA's policy on "Academic and Social Achievement" leads to a 404- Not Found error.

I'll be a brief as I have an event to get to. IF I have more time tonight or tomorrow AM, I will try to answer more questions/comments.

As far as SACS and the school's accreditation, I am not sure that SACS is going to do much since going forward, UNC has announced various changes and ways to close some of the gaps, like AFAM not being reviewed every five years due to there not being a graduate program there, as well as the changes made before Fort became Chancellor.

More importantly, just a few months ago (July), SACS told Fort that their changes were sufficient and SACS was not going to delve further.

From the Wainstein Report*:

UNC’s accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges (“SACSCOC”), reviewed matters related to the irregular AFAM courses, and in June 2013 its Board of Trustees decided not to sanction Chapel Hill.54 After monitoring Chapel Hill’s

implementation of remedial policies to prevent a recurrence of such irregularities, SACSCOC notified Chapel Hill in June 2014 that it would take no further action.

That said, the Washington Post ran an AP story which talked to SACS President Belle Wheelan, who said:

“What we would do is ask them is, this is bigger than you thought it was, what are you going to do now? It’s a mess. We are interested in more than anything in making sure that the students don’t run into problems trying to explain any degrees that they have after the fact as a result of this.”

For those who did not read the full report and only headlines, I direct you to a summary from The Chronicle of Higher Education as it is not behind their paywall.

*-Edited to show Wainstein Report text regarding SACS.

[FiddySicks]

If you're waiting for something bad to happen to UNC's accreditation, I reiterate...Liberty, which tells its students man walked with the dinosaurs 6000 years ago and also runs what amounts to an online for-profit school in terms of enrollment, is at the highest level of accreditation.

I get where you're coming from, really. But I'm not seeing much correlation between a two-bit bible college teaching "intelligent" design, and a full scale cheating scandal that spans nearly two decades. It's not really a fair comparison.

[rams80]

If you're waiting for something bad to happen to UNC's accreditation, I reiterate...Liberty, which tells its students man walked with the dinosaurs 6000 years ago and also runs what amounts to an online for-profit school in terms of enrollment, is at the highest level of accreditation.

I get where you're coming from, really. But I'm not seeing much correlation between a two-bit bible college teaching "intelligent" design, and a full scale cheating scandal that spans nearly two decades. It's not really a fair comparison.

Intelligent Design, quite frankly, would be an upgrade over what Liberty teaches.

But the point is that SACS slots Liberty at the accreditation tier inhabited by the likes of Duke, Virginia, and Florida. Despite the rather public flaws in their science curriculum.

[dfwabel]

Well, bumping prior to the NCAA Committee on Infractions' (CoI) ruling on UNC which is to be handed out on Friday, Oct. 13.

 

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/unc/unc-now/article178496691.html

[Discrim]

So, UNC being Morris Browned confirmed?

[goalieboy82]

and that was a dry hole:

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/21008004/north-carolina-tar-heels-avoid-major-sanctions-academics-fraud-case

[dfwabel]

Only failure to cooperate violations.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/the-latest-unc-gets-ncaa-academic-case-ruling-friday/2017/10/13/b70c22e0-b01d-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html?utm_term=.a9f1634cac6b

[Lights Out]

The NCAA is a cowardly, pathetic organization that should be disbanded.

[BlackBolt3]

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