This past Wednesday the University of North Carolina admitted to committing academic fraud for athletes.
These phantom classes were created under the Afro-American studies department. The goal of the “shadow curriculum” was to help athletes with GPAs that were borderline or below the 2.0 requirement stay afloat.
According to the New York Times, more than 3,100 students, 47.6 percent of them athletes, were enrolled in and received credit for the phantom classes.
The amount of effort students had to put in to pass the course were extremely low. Only one paper was required to be turn in all semester. In most cases, the papers were plagiarized or had little concrete content. The professors in charge of the classes would give the papers A’s or B’s despite the lack of effort and accuracy regarding the assignment.
The malpractice and moral wrongdoings by the former department head, former office administrator within the African and Afro-American Studies department and counselors went on for eighteen years.
This is not the first time UNC has been under fire for helping out student athletes and their GPAs. In November 2009, a multitude of academic counselors were charged with augmenting grades for football players. The nonexistent classes run by the African studies department granted A’s and B’s to students taking the courses.
The administrator, Deborah Crowder, who originally set up and run the fake classes retired, supposedly ending the long-running academic fraud at Chapel Hill.
The counselors gathered in a meeting with the UNC football coaches and had to confess that the classes played a “large role in keeping underprepared and/or unmotivated players eligible to play.
The following is an excerpt that was obtained by during the conference:
“We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which … they didn’t go to class … they didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake … they didn’t have to meet with professors … they didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material,” a slide in the presentation said. “THESE NO LONGER EXIST!”
UNC professor Julius Nyang’oro took over after Crowder’s leave. He decided to continue the “shadow curriculum” and added six more classes so more athletes could enroll.
The report uncovering the eighteen year scandal was conducted by Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former general counsel at the F.B.I. and partner at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
I have three words for the “academic counselors” and “professors” who have condoned this level of academic fraud to ensue for almost two decades.
Shame on you.
The fact that the African and Afro-American Studies department got caught once already should have been a sign to call it quits.
Moreover, if the department knew they had no intention on eliminating the fake classes, they should have not mustered up the “courage” to apologize and admit their wrong doings to the public.
As a faculty member for UNC, how can you choose to pursue a career in education, assuming your passion and goals are to better the future of America by reaching out and helping students, and allow to give them, and yourself, the easy way out?
I understand that the academic counselors and professors that chose to partake in the “shadow curriculum” were trying to help struggling athletes so that they could keep their scholarship and play football.
However, isn’t a part (or in this case, a very minute part) of attending university is to pursue a degree of higher education? Even if your goal is to end up playing for the NFL, NBA, WNBA etc., why should you cheat yourself of gaining knowledge when it’s right in front of you?
I get that UNC is a heavily emphasized sports university. They are good at sports. A job as a professional athlete is attainable to them. But by focusing so heavily in this profession, as competitive and narrow as it is, nothing, and I mean nothing, can replace intelligence.
If you’re able to make it in the professional leagues; I commend you. You are much more athletic than the majority of the world (including me). But for you to be that great in sports, you must possess discipline, perseverance, drive and a natural disposition for that sport.
If the academic counselors and professors told student athletes that possessed those qualities to transfer them over to their studies in order to meet that 2.0 GPA requirement, then maybe the students could have earned their own A’s and B’s rather than forging them.
This would have resulted in not only a more motivated student, but one who is genuinely learning and gaining a fuller college experience and education that they earned.
In turn, there would not have been any shadiness from the African and Afro-American Studies department, academic counselors and professors. There would not have been a need for a “shadow curriculum.” And there would not have been academic fraud at UNC.
