HUGE Student-Athlete Academic Scandal at UNC

My personal experiences don't apply to the more legitimate courses of study like biology, chemistry, business, etc. I had friends and roommates in these majors and they were smart people who worked hard.

I spent my time slacking my way through BS classes like History, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, Geography, African Studies, etc. I 100% believe that you can coast through these types of classes at any public university. Surely you don't all believe that a frat boy with a Communications degree has worked hard and accomplished something impressive.

I didn't have a career path in mind while I was in college so I was just taking the easy way through. Attitudes are changing now but back just a few years ago people would tell you that any degree at a good university was valuable. Now, people are starting to question the value of paying big money to get a liberal arts degree. Luckily I didn't have to go into debt to get mine.

Again, I was calling out the liberal arts curriculum in general, not UNC. Anybody who expects the AFAM department at any university to represent the gold standard of higher learning is fooling themselves.

I don't care about my undergraduate degree now because I went on to get a graduate degree and establish a career. Nobody cares about what I did as an undergrad now. I have cheered for UNC basketball and football since I was 3 years old. I'm not going to stop now because the players took easy classes.

UNC is a bs school. This story exposes them for what they are. UNC folks demean State and ECU every chance they get and have acted with self righteous snobbery for years. Hopefully I won't have to hear another loudmouth talking about "the Carolina way" again. If you want to see the level of Carolina BS take a look at the players who took Africam American studies. It's the who's who of Carolina basketball. Roy Smith won't resign because Carolina doesn't care about the rules because they feel they are better then everyone else and don't have to follow rules and laws. The commissioner of the ACC is the former AD at UNC and he played football for Chapel Hill. How can the ACC do anything when the commish probably took part in the cesspool ?

Hey Stoopid wrote:

You must be very proud of yourself.

I have no reason to be proud of my undergrad degree. I didn't work hard for it. I am proud of myself for other things though. I have put in a lot of time and effort for my running PRs so I am proud of those.

Someone very close to me was an All American athlete at UNC and Phi Beta Kappa in economics and math. He went on to obtain a Phd in econ and is renowned in his field.

His education at UNC was every bit equal to mine (I attended a top USNWR school, and did well).

Education is subject to the same basic principles encountered in other areas of life. One gets out of a program what they put into it.

I don't care about my undergraduate degree now because I went on to get a graduate degree and establish a career. Nobody cares about what I did as an undergrad now. I have cheered for UNC basketball and football since I was 3 years old. I'm not going to stop now because the players took easy classes.[/quote]

The players weren't taking "easy classes". They were taking "fake" paper classes - big difference. Have you read all the e-mails released Wednesday between various advisers and coaches? In those e-mails, the advisers are told what grade the athlete has to receive to remain eligible and to boost the APR. Crowder - not the professor - would "grade" the paper and ensure the athlete remained eligible. Sometimes the exact same "paper" was submitted by two different athletes. Papers submitted were heavily plagiarised. In addition, grades submitted by honest professors were changed. Not just changed a little, but from incomplete to an A. These weren't athletes taking "easy" classes - it was fraud.

The report focused on the AFAM studies program. However, read the e-mails. This fraud case involves Exercise Science program, Philosophy, History, Naval Sciences, and a few other departments. The athletic programs participating included Men's and Women's Basketball, Football, Women and Men's Swim/Dive, Women's Soccer, & Men's Baseball.

Just because you have done something since you were three years old doesn't mean you should shrug off the worst academic scandal in NCAA history. Honesty and integrity mean nothing to you? Sad. I love sports, but if the team I support gets caught doing this, unless they were severely punished, fired all those involved, and made dramatic changes, they would lose my support.

Strong words from a person on an internet blog, with no skin in the game here. This is how I support my family, I'm not going to tell my wife I've lost my job and no one will hire me now because I felt compelled to tell on an athlete who had someone else doing his homework.

Shameful wrote:

In other words, you are a coward and have no integrity.

Not unique wrote:

Because:

A) It would be career suicide.

B) The whistle blowers always take the hardest fall.

Audit some of the transcripts at your own university. See how many athletes have (leadership development) courses or similar titles that somehow count toward degree credit for most majors but are only prevalent on athletic transcripts.

So you had no integrity or will for hard work then. And you have no expectation of integrity or hard from others now. Got it. You sound like a real stand up guy. We should be more like you and look the other way.

The players weren't taking "easy classes". They were taking "fake" paper classes - big difference. Have you read all the e-mails released Wednesday between various advisers and coaches? In those e-mails, the advisers are told what grade the athlete has to receive to remain eligible and to boost the APR. Crowder - not the professor - would "grade" the paper and ensure the athlete remained eligible. Sometimes the exact same "paper" was submitted by two different athletes. Papers submitted were heavily plagiarised. In addition, grades submitted by honest professors were changed. Not just changed a little, but from incomplete to an A. These weren't athletes taking "easy" classes - it was fraud.

The report focused on the AFAM studies program. However, read the e-mails. This fraud case involves Exercise Science program, Philosophy, History, Naval Sciences, and a few other departments. The athletic programs participating included Men's and Women's Basketball, Football, Women and Men's Swim/Dive, Women's Soccer, & Men's Baseball.

Just because you have done something since you were three years old doesn't mean you should shrug off the worst academic scandal in NCAA history. Honesty and integrity mean nothing to you? Sad. I love sports, but if the team I support gets caught doing this, unless they were severely punished, fired all those involved, and made dramatic changes, they would lose my support.[/quote]

I've read most of the report. I'm not sure what the other emails are that you are referring to but I wouldn't mind taking a look at them.

The academic support staff giving Crowder a grade range is the ugliest part of the story. Their job is to keep the athletes eligible but they went too far there. If the NCAA feels they have enough evidence to tie that to the athletic department then it will be a violation.

The report said that Crowder made 677 grade changes over her entire career. 670 of those were from incomplete to a letter grade and the report presumes those were for papers that were submitted late. To my knowledge and personal experience changing grades from incomplete to letter grades was not unusual in other departments and was not reserved for athletes.

This scandal broke 3 years ago and the school has gone further than any school before to publicly investigate the inner workings of athlete academics. Given all they have been through, at this point UNC is surely running one of the cleanest programs in the country. The NCAA was done with the issue and UNC opened it back up by hiring Wainstein to do this report.

Almost everyone involved in the scandal is already fired, retired, or resigned. UNC rivals really just want Roy Williams gone and the Wainstein report doesn't even come close to implicating him.

Wait, a large D1 college is letting athletes skate by on academics?

Shocking!!!

ohio bowling wrote:

Wait, a large D1 college is letting athletes skate by on academics?

Shocking!!!

Well, nobody here thought that -for example- Derrick Rose was a good student-athlete back in Memphis.

At least, he can put a legible sentence together.

You are not the ambassador you think you are.

The quote below is a good example of grammar used by UNC athletes.

[quote]Non-state schooler wrote:

So you had no integrity or will for hard work then. And you have no expectation of integrity or hard from others now. Got it. You sound like a real stand up guy. We should be more like you and look the other way.

[quote]

Ha. You can start here. Can you diagram this sentence? Do you see anything wrong with its syntax or grammar?"At least, he can put a legible sentence together. "This is an internet forum, Einstein. Read at your own peril.

Where to start? wrote:

At least, he can put a legible sentence together.

You are not the ambassador you think you are.

The quote below is a good example of grammar used by UNC athletes.

[quote]Non-state schooler wrote:

So you had no integrity or will for hard work then. And you have no expectation of integrity or hard from others now. Got it. You sound like a real stand up guy. We should be more like you and look the other way.

[quote]

Naval Science? That's Navy ROTC, and that's pretty disturbing.

Is your name Bradley Bethel?

Not unique wrote:

Strong words from a person on an internet blog, with no skin in the game here. This is how I support my family, I'm not going to tell my wife I've lost my job and no one will hire me now because I felt compelled to tell on an athlete who had someone else doing his homework.

Shameful wrote:

In other words, you are a coward and have no integrity.

I went to UNC wrote:

Almost everyone involved in the scandal is already fired, retired, or resigned.

That's what UNC has said for the after each of the previous six inquiries they've done (not independent investigations, mind you). However, as a result of this latest inquiry, 9 others were fired or disciplined. Four years after the first inkling of the scandal became public, there were still 9 people still at UNC that were heavily involved in this cheating.

Pope Center weighs in.

"These classes never met, had no instructor, and had only one requirement, a written paper that was arbitrarily given a good grade by a non-faculty administrator. Plagiarism (later found in 40 percent of the papers surveyed) was ignored.

The classes enabled 329 students to maintain athletic eligibility, and 81 students would never have graduated without them."

Has the corruption ended at UNC-Chapel Hill?

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3087#.VEqBtvldVbq

garland823 wrote:

Naval Science? That's Navy ROTC, and that's pretty disturbing.

Yes, emails confirm it. In addition, a former UNC Professor Darryl Meeks has taken to twitter to confirm it. He said the coaches demanded the advisers keep the players eligible. Also said Roy Williams is "full of ***" and "has no credibility. None". Evidently this particular professor, unlike some others in his department, refused to play ball and failed some football players in his class. Needless to say, fewer signed up for his classes after that.

it depends wrote:

Someone very close to me was an All American athlete at UNC and Phi Beta Kappa in economics and math. He went on to obtain a Phd in econ and is renowned in his field.

His education at UNC was every bit equal to mine (I attended a top USNWR school, and did well).

Education is subject to the same basic principles encountered in other areas of life. One gets out of a program what they put into it.

I don't think that anyone is saying that it was impossible to get a good education at UNC.

I do think that people are concerned as to whether a UNC diploma signifies anything. The duration and the extent of the corruption at UNC are truly awe-inspiring. Not only were their student athletes involved, but the general student body seems to have been advised to take these classes when needed.

The signaling effect of a UNC diploma is severely diminished. Yes-- it is possible that any one student got a good education at UNC, but it is also possible that the student got by without doing much of anything. Every single UNC grad just took a reputational hit.

It is a heck of a way to treat your student body and it speaks volumes about who really runs the school.

I went to UNC wrote:

UNC rivals really just want Roy Williams gone and the Wainstein report doesn't even come close to implicating him.

I think most UNC rivals would rather see Dean Smith thrown under the bus. ;^)

In all honesty though, Dean was a ba____rd and it would not surprise me at all if this culture originated with him.