Keeping the Athletic Graduation rate up at UNC,

[Bronzeage]

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released the report on its latest investigation into alleged academic fraud on Wednesday.

The report details how a lack of oversight allowed Department of African and Afro-American Studies administrator Deborah Crowder and former chairman Julius Nyang'oro to create so-called "paper classes." In these classes, students received high grades with "little regard" for the quality of their work.

Anyone who grew up in an academic environment, especially a sports power university is familiar with the stories of courses in underwater basket weaving and psychoceramics(crackpots). These are classes tailored for athletes who are attending college on a scholarship and don't have time for things like classes and studying. Apparently, the UNC Department of African Studies made classes so easy, even the basketball coach advised players not to take them. Even the athlete graduates who benefited from the credits are now complaining. It must have gotten pretty bad, because UNC had to bring in the grownups to settle things. Former Federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein was brought in to take names and kick asses, sort of.

A prosecutor said Thursday he has dismissed a felony fraud charge against a former North Carolina professor linked to a scandal involving academics and athletics because he has cooperated in the investigation.

When the dust settled and all the hands were wrung, the two people who were selected to take all the blame, were given and "alls well that ends well," plea bargain. They cooperated with the investigation, which spared them any serious charges. Professor Nyang'oro did have to give back $12,000 dollars he received for a summer lecture course that never actually met. It was supposed to be an "independent study" course.

This was when my WTF-ometer pegged the needle. Twelve thousand dollars for a summer course? That's a grand a week or so, for what couldn't be more than maybe 10 hours a week work. Nice work if you can get it. It appears, since the Prof and his accomplice played nice with others when the inquisition came to town, they get a pass. Since both are already retired, it's not like they might lose their jobs. Of course, what's really important is no one currently employed by the University, or any other branch of state government, has to explain what they knew and when they knew it.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

GO TARHEELS!!!!

Class of '87 here.

I was not a jock and I took no no-show classes the entire time I was in attendance at UNC.

I have been following these shenanigans since the story broke and quite frankly, I am pissed.

The AS/AAS program isn't to blame for this and it certainly was not in this alone. But you won't be hearing anything from the "Rocks for Jocks" or "Physics for Poets" hard sciences departments, the "Math Class for Muscle Heads" contingent or the Taco Bell Spanish or French Fry French sections in the foreign Language departments.

The academics offered to "student athletes" at power house universities across this country are a joke and everyone knows it. But everyone just winks at the problem and then root root roots the home team to the final four.

And dont get me wrong. I love sports and I love winning and I love the Tarheels and the University, but this shit has got to stop.

Time for minor league basketball and football to take over supplying the pros with players and ending the lie that in the athletic scholarship.

 

[Bronzeage]

GO TARHEELS!!!!

Class of '87 here.

I was not a jock and I took no no-show classes the entire time I was in attendance at UNC.

I have been following these shenanigans since the story broke and quite frankly, I am pissed.

The AS/AAS program isn't to blame for this and it certainly was not in this alone. But you won't be hearing anything from the "Rocks for Jocks" or "Physics for Poets" hard sciences departments, the "Math Class for Muscle Heads" contingent or the Taco Bell Spanish or French Fry French sections in the foreign Language departments.

The academics offered to "student athletes" at power house universities across this country are a joke and everyone knows it. But everyone just winks at the problem and then root root roots the home team to the final four.

And dont get me wrong. I love sports and I love winning and I love the Tarheels and the University, but this shit has got to stop.

Time for minor league basketball and football to take over supplying the pros with players and ending the lie that in the athletic scholarship.

My father graduated from NC State. When he got his Phd, he joined LSU and we settled into Baton Rouge. LSU had a history of helping athletes keep their grades up with crip course, along with all the other privilges of athletes have. When Nick Sabin came to LSU, he pretty much shut that down. He started a rigorous academic program for the football players. Class attendance was mandatory when the team was on campus. Evening study hours with tutors were required. For all the nasty things said about him after he left, he transformed the LSU football program. The current coach, Les Miles continued the program and even strengthened the standards. This has meant LSU has had to forego some recruits because it was plain they could not make it as a student, no matter how good a player they might be.

Even so, it's a tremendous amount of money to spend. Money is the key word. College football at this level takes a lot of cash. Most of it comes from outside sources, better known as the Tiger Athletic Foundation. This operation raises millions of dollars from alumni and other people with too much cash. Tiger Stadium now holds about 100,000 people on a Saturday night, thanks to a building program funded by "self generated" funds and donations.

 

[Derec]

Lubchenko learn nothing!

But then again, "ethnic grievance for jocks" type of classes are probably just a fraction less academically demanding than other "ethnic grievance" type classes ...

 

[doubtingt]

The AS/AAS program isn't to blame for this and it certainly was not in this alone.

The AAS program is certainly to blame and the faculty and staff involved should be fired. This is not simply about jocks getting favors, but fraudulent academic program that for around 20 years has been benefiting itself, getting undeserved salaries, and likely undeserved tenure and new hiring slots based upon fake courses and fake grades to any student that wanted them in order to inflate their courseload and student ratings.

In May, UNC publicly announced an internal probe found that 54 classes in the department of African and Afro-American Studies were either "aberrant" or "irregularly" taught from summer 2007 to summer 2011.

A three-month investigation into academic fraud at the University of North Carolina revealed that not only student-athletes were given added academic benefits within the school's African and Afro-American Studies department.

Rather, students at large benefited from anomalies specific to the department, such as unauthorized grade changes, forged faculty signatures on grade rolls and limited or no class time.

"This was not an athletic scandal," former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin told UNC's board of trustees. "It was an academic scandal, which is worse."

The independent investigation, headed by Martin, shows that irregularities in the African and Afro-American Studies department went back further than an original probe revealed -- to fall 1997.

According to the report, the review found 216 classes with proven or potential problems, including 454 unauthorized grade changes.

But the report also stated that the percentage of unauthorized grade changes for student-athletes was consistent with student-athlete enrollment in those courses.

"The athletic department, coaches and players did not create this," Martin told the board of trustees. "It was not in their jurisdiction, it was the academic side."

With hundreds of fake courses taken by thousands of students over 20 years within the AAS department, there is no way that this activity was not well known to and covered up the majority of faculty and staff in that department.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While this is worse than typical college athletics it's merely a bad example of a range, not some wild outlier.

My mother used to teach at a community college and had her own run-in with the athletics department in the form of the star women's basketball player that somehow ended up in her class.

The school was very unhappy when the farthest she would compromise was reinstating the student (she was dropped as a no-show in accordance with procedure) and letting her make up the final. She needed a nearly perfect score on the final in order to pass the class, she managed to get 25% on a true/false, no time limit, no guessing penalty test. Saved the team's ass but that put her on academic probation and thus off the team for a semester.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The AAS program is certainly to blame and the faculty and staff involved should be fired. This is not simply about jocks getting favors, but fraudulent academic program that for around 20 years has been benefiting itself, getting undeserved salaries, and likely undeserved tenure and new hiring slots based upon fake courses and fake grades to any student that wanted them in order to inflate their courseload and student ratings.

In May, UNC publicly announced an internal probe found that 54 classes in the department of African and Afro-American Studies were either "aberrant" or "irregularly" taught from summer 2007 to summer 2011.

A three-month investigation into academic fraud at the University of North Carolina revealed that not only student-athletes were given added academic benefits within the school's African and Afro-American Studies department.

Rather, students at large benefited from anomalies specific to the department, such as unauthorized grade changes, forged faculty signatures on grade rolls and limited or no class time.

"This was not an athletic scandal," former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin told UNC's board of trustees. "It was an academic scandal, which is worse."

The independent investigation, headed by Martin, shows that irregularities in the African and Afro-American Studies department went back further than an original probe revealed -- to fall 1997.

According to the report, the review found 216 classes with proven or potential problems, including 454 unauthorized grade changes.

But the report also stated that the percentage of unauthorized grade changes for student-athletes was consistent with student-athlete enrollment in those courses.

"The athletic department, coaches and players did not create this," Martin told the board of trustees. "It was not in their jurisdiction, it was the academic side."

With hundreds of fake courses taken by thousands of students over 20 years within the AAS department, there is no way that this activity was not well known to and covered up the majority of faculty and staff in that department.

What has happened here is that practices that were in full play at UNC before they even have a AS/AAS course much less a department, have been exposed. And if you abolished the whole department at 5:00 today, the practice of getting grades for playing sports and not for learning the material will continue on its merry way at UNC. The problem is pervasive and systemic. I am not saying the AS/AAS dept. was sent like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, but they are a piee of a whole, a the fall guy that will allow these practices in other departments to go on and on and on.

This is the way sport and business are run at UNC.

 

[doubtingt]

The AAS program is certainly to blame and the faculty and staff involved should be fired. This is not simply about jocks getting favors, but fraudulent academic program that for around 20 years has been benefiting itself, getting undeserved salaries, and likely undeserved tenure and new hiring slots based upon fake courses and fake grades to any student that wanted them in order to inflate their courseload and student ratings.




With hundreds of fake courses taken by thousands of students over 20 years within the AAS department, there is no way that this activity was not well known to and covered up the majority of faculty and staff in that department.

What has happened here is that practices that were in full play at UNC before they even have a AS/AAS course much less a department, have been exposed. And if you abolished the whole department at 5:00 today, the practice of getting grades for playing sports and not for learning the material will continue on its merry way at UNC. The problem is pervasive and systemic. I am not saying the AS/AAS dept. was sent like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, but they are a piee of a whole, a the fall guy that will allow these practices in other departments to go on and on and on.

This is the way sport and business are run at UNC.

This goes well beyond the more widespread practice of inflating grades of athletes that are struggling in a class. This is about inventing hundreds of fake courses that anyone could and did take (not just athletes), and giving everyone enrolled good grades for doing essentially nothing. This about professors stealing from the university by lying about the number of courses they truly taught and their workload. There is no evidence this went on outside of the AAS program. The faculty responsible should be more than fired, they should be sued for all back pay and put in prison if possible.

 

[doubtingt]

My mother used to teach at a community college and had her own run-in with the athletics department in the form of the star women's basketball player that somehow ended up in her class.
.

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

 

[dismal]

What has happened here is that practices that were in full play at UNC before they even have a AS/AAS course much less a department, have been exposed. And if you abolished the whole department at 5:00 today, the practice of getting grades for playing sports and not for learning the material will continue on its merry way at UNC. The problem is pervasive and systemic. I am not saying the AS/AAS dept. was sent like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, but they are a piee of a whole, a the fall guy that will allow these practices in other departments to go on and on and on.

This is the way sport and business are run at UNC.

This goes well beyond the more widespread practice of inflating grades of athletes that are struggling in a class. This is about inventing hundreds of fake courses that anyone could and did take (not just athletes), and giving everyone enrolled good grades for doing essentially nothing. This about professors stealing from the university by lying about the number of courses they truly taught and their workload. There is no evidence this went on outside of the AAS program. The faculty responsible should be more than fired, they should be sued for all back pay and put in prison if possible.

The main person wasn't even a professor. It's really quite stunning this was allowed to happen for 18 years. One of those secrets that thousands of people knew about. The athletic department was complicit too. I would expect them to be hit very hard.

http://advancingrefor.staging.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/UNC-FINAL-REPORT.pdf

 

[AthenaAwakened]

What has happened here is that practices that were in full play at UNC before they even have a AS/AAS course much less a department, have been exposed. And if you abolished the whole department at 5:00 today, the practice of getting grades for playing sports and not for learning the material will continue on its merry way at UNC. The problem is pervasive and systemic. I am not saying the AS/AAS dept. was sent like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, but they are a piee of a whole, a the fall guy that will allow these practices in other departments to go on and on and on.

This is the way sport and business are run at UNC.

This goes well beyond the more widespread practice of inflating grades of athletes that are struggling in a class. This is about inventing hundreds of fake courses that anyone could and did take (not just athletes), and giving everyone enrolled good grades for doing essentially nothing. This about professors stealing from the university by lying about the number of courses they truly taught and their workload. There is no evidence this went on outside of the AAS program.There The faculty responsible should be more than fired, they should be sued for all back pay and put in prison if possible.

There is no evidence that you have seen.

And why do you suppose that harsher penalties weren't meted out?

Silence is golden (or at the very least it can get you gold)

 

[AthenaAwakened]

My mother used to teach at a community college and had her own run-in with the athletics department in the form of the star women's basketball player that somehow ended up in her class.
.

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

uh huh.

Tell you what, you believe what you want to believe, and I'll know the truth.

 

[dismal]

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

uh huh.

Tell you what, you believe what you want to believe, and I'll know the truth.

You could read the report then decide what you believe. I linked it my previous post.

 

[Bronzeage]

My mother used to teach at a community college and had her own run-in with the athletics department in the form of the star women's basketball player that somehow ended up in her class.
.

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

I grew up in the environment and to put it plainly, I'm not buying it. There are no secrets on a college campus. For this to have gone on as long as it did, means it was an accepted part of UNC corporate culture. Two people who know longer work for UNC take the fall, leaving Deans, Chancellors, Athletic Directors, Presidents and Board Members doing their best Inspector Renault imitation, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that academic fraud is going on in here!"

 

[doubtingt]

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

I grew up in the environment and to put it plainly, I'm not buying it. There are no secrets on a college campus. For this to have gone on as long as it did, means it was an accepted part of UNC corporate culture. Two people who know longer work for UNC take the fall, leaving Deans, Chancellors, Athletic Directors, Presidents and Board Members doing their best Inspector Renault imitation, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that academic fraud is going on in here!"

I'm not saying no one else knew about it. Every faculty and staff member in the African-American Studies had to have known. The key prof involved been the longtime chair of that dept, so if he was willing to allow completely fake courses, then you can bet the real courses in that dept didn't take much more than a pulse to pass. That entire department and all degrees it has issued in last decades are fraudulent.
Also, some in the athletic dept did know about it. But nothing close to this scale of outright fraudulent courses goes on in most departments, and faculty outside of that department don't know or care what that department is doing. BTW, this investigation has been going on for several years, and Nyang'oro (the key prof invloved and Chair of the AAAS department) did not really retire, but rather resigned in shame after it was already clear he was at the center of it. IOW, he isn't blamed because he's gone, he's gone because he was most to blame.

 

[doubtingt]

It is an extreme outlier. This is not profs being pressured by coaches. IT is profs taking it upon themselves to create fake courses that weren't actually taught and that anyone could enroll in an get an easy grade for no real work. The investigation found that athletes were not given special treatment within these courses. Everyone got fake grades. This is only incidentally related to the athletics programs, because some of the student advisors who had heard about these fake courses in the AAAS department told struggling athletes to enroll in them for an easy grade.

uh huh.

Yeah, that is your standard argument. How many African-American studies courses did you take at UNC to develop such reasoning skills?

Tell you what, you believe what you want to believe, and I'll know the truth.

I know what the investigated facts revealed and I know what goes on in terms of typical grade inflation for athletes. Given your established track record of not knowing what evidence actually is or how to draw reasoned inferences from it, you're personal anecdotes at UNC don't mean much.

Your personal connections just inflate your more general bias to downplay the culpability of the African-American Studies program and the criminal fraudulence of Nyang'oro, who I am guessing that you might know since he is a leading "scholar" in that field and was a visiting prof and fellow while you were attending UNC.

 

[laughing dog]

I'm not saying no one else knew about it. Every faculty and staff member in the African-American Studies had to have known. The key prof involved been the longtime chair of that dept, so if he was willing to allow completely fake courses, then you can bet the real courses in that dept didn't take much more than a pulse to pass.

That conclusion does not necessarily follow from the facts in evidence. If the ersatz courses were limited mostly to the summer or to a small subsection of the entire course offerings, it is possible that faculty who do not pay attention to curricular matters did not know.

That entire department and all degrees it has issued in last decades are fraudulent.

A rather over-reaching conclusion. They might be suspect but necessarily fraudulent?

 

[doubtingt]

That conclusion does not necessarily follow from the facts in evidence. If the ersatz courses were limited mostly to the summer or to a small subsection of the entire course offerings, it is possible that faculty who do not pay attention to curricular matters did not know.

Well of course it doesn't "necessarily follow", but it is very implausible that many of the other faculty in that department didn't know. We are talking decades, hundreds of courses, and thousands of students in rather small department of only 10-15 full time faculty. There's just no plausible way that this would go unnoticed by the other faculty and graduate students, most of whom would be interacting with and teaching in other courses many of the undergrads taking these fake classes.

That entire department and all degrees it has issued in last decades are fraudulent.

A rather over-reaching conclusion. They might be suspect but necessarily fraudulent?

Okay, a bit strong, but given this prof had been there for 30 years and was the Chair of the dept for many of those, it is a near certainty that his same affirmative-action philosophy of free grades and no standards impacted many of the other courses that were actually taught.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

uh huh.

Tell you what, you believe what you want to believe, and I'll know the truth.

You could read the report then decide what you believe. I linked it my previous post.

Or I could do what I have been doing which is talk to my friends who work and teach at UNC, talk to members of the Rams club (as a former member I know quite a few), not to mention former athletes, other alumni and the a couple of members of the University North Carolina System Board of Governors who work with me in my church's state convention.

But you have a report.

You should go with that.

 

[Bronzeage]

I grew up in the environment and to put it plainly, I'm not buying it. There are no secrets on a college campus. For this to have gone on as long as it did, means it was an accepted part of UNC corporate culture. Two people who know longer work for UNC take the fall, leaving Deans, Chancellors, Athletic Directors, Presidents and Board Members doing their best Inspector Renault imitation, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that academic fraud is going on in here!"

I'm not saying no one else knew about it. Every faculty and staff member in the African-American Studies had to have known. The key prof involved been the longtime chair of that dept, so if he was willing to allow completely fake courses, then you can bet the real courses in that dept didn't take much more than a pulse to pass. That entire department and all degrees it has issued in last decades are fraudulent.
Also, some in the athletic dept did know about it. But nothing close to this scale of outright fraudulent courses goes on in most departments, and faculty outside of that department don't know or care what that department is doing. BTW, this investigation has been going on for several years, and Nyang'oro (the key prof invloved and Chair of the AAAS department) did not really retire, but rather resigned in shame after it was already clear he was at the center of it. IOW, he isn't blamed because he's gone, he's gone because he was most to blame.

Which in the academic world is known as labere in gladio tuo*.





*falling on your sword.