UNC Scandal: Fake Classes For Athletes

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After a 5 year investigation UNC has finally admitted wrongdoing in what is being called the biggest academic fraud scheme in history. The scandal, which has rocked the academic world, has not only created a dilemma for the NCAA on how to proceed with punishment, but has academic officials wondering if and how they can revoke degrees that were awarded to those who never deserved them.

Gerald Gurney, president of the Drake Group, whose mission is “to defend academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports,” said the findings should provide an opportunity for the NCAA to levy one of its most severe charges against UNC: lack of institutional control.

“I can safely say that the scope of the 20-year UNC fraud scandal easily takes the prize for the largest and most nefarious scandal in the history of NCAA enforcement. The depth and breadth of the scheme — involving counselors, coaches, academic administrators, faculty, athletic administrators, etc. — eclipses any previous case,” Gurney said.

To date, 4 employees have been fired and 5 more have been disciplined for their roles in the scandal. At least 1 former employee has had their honorary status removed.  For 5 years, UNC insisted the paper classes were the doing of one rogue professor: the department chair of the African-American studies program, Julius Nyang’oro. However, a new report from independent investigator Kenneth Wainstein has revealed that the fraud is much wider.

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According to the report, Nyang’oro’s assistant, Debbie Crowder, created the paper classes out of sympathy for athletes and other students who were not “the best and the brightest.” Crowder was a huge fan of UNC sports and was a lax grader who handed out high grades without regard for content. Additionally, 5 college counselors also made use of paper classes, calling them “GPA boosters,” and at least 1 football counselor asked Crowder to grade an athlete favorably so that they’d be able to continue to participate in sports.

Former women’s basketball academic adviser Jan Boxill was also implicated in the report, with claims that she frequently suggested grades to Crowder, that she knew at least 1 athlete was only taking “two real courses” and that she even helped athletes write papers.  “Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs,” one email from Boxill to Crowder said. “I didn’t look at the paper but figured it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn’t figure from where!”

Former UNC football player Michael McAdoo told authorities he was basically forced into majoring in African-American studies, the department at the heart of the paper-classes scandal, so that he could “get by” academically. McAdoo said faculty members strongly encouraged him to enroll in classes that only existed on paper, but never actually met in a real classroom.  Interestingly, these classes were filled with football players and other UNC sports standouts just to keep them academically eligible to continue playing for the revered sports program.

“They pretty much put me in that class,” McAdoo said of the counselors in the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes. “They pretty much told me … that I might want to consider that class and I really don’t have much time to think about it, so (I might) want to take that class while it was available.”

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According to university learning specialist Mary Willingham, dozens of athletes who came to UNC were unable to read at an acceptable level, with some of them reading on par with elementary schoolchildren.  Unfortunately for them, they were never offered assistance to improve academically, but were merely pushed along for the sake of the college sports program.

“These counselors saw the paper classes and the artificially high grades they yielded as key to helping some student-athletes remain eligible,” Wainstein wrote in his report.

UNC has long been considered the type of institution where athletics and academics went hand in hand, with a stellar reputation that produced basketball greats such as coach Dean Smith and player Michael Jordan.  Now, that reputation has been permanently tainted.