Another Shoe drops in the North Carolina Fiasco

[OneTrickPony]

Bet Diamond is glad she's out of this mess. Now, she goes to a school where skipping study hall means you don't play.

Diamond's decision making looks better and better with time..

 

[msf22b]

So. Penina, the great kid from New Zealand (A nice Story thread) isn't eligible for Stanford (in some rankings the toughest school to get into, in some rankings 6th), but Tara knows for sure that Cal will accept her….Hmmm.

I always thought Berkeley was one of the most competitive schools, in one survey the 37th toughest school to get into.

Seems like Stanford makes no (or almost no) concession for athletic prowess in admissions and just about everybody else does.
i personally know of a Harvard recruitment of a kid who might have had inadequate preparation.

BTW: did anyone notice the descriptions by Griner of her attack in China? Sounded like the writing of your typical 3rd-grader from the South Bronx.

And I'm not trying to attack Brittany, just using her as an example

One has to be mighty suspicious of the degrees handed out by these esteemed Universities.

 

[pinotbear]

Shocking! I tell you, shocking!

 

[Vowelguy]

No, but they are quite arrogant when it comes to their academic and athletic reputation. I am sure this will hurt them in recruiting quality athletes and quality students.

I'm sure it won't.

 

[tennparker3]

Diamond wanted to leave before last season started and was begged to stay. She wanted to come to Tennessee for a long time but Pat stepping down threw her off kilter with her decision. She has mentioned this a few times in interviews.

She was recently name student athlete of the month so she is proving to be a great student. She mentioned once how much she still had to figure out as far as balancing everything when she got to Tennessee. Apparently it wasn't as challenging at UNC.

 

[tomcat]

Stand by, there are more schools in the same boat. Unfortunately, UNC got caught and will pay the punishment.....

I don't see why it's unfortunate at all. This really has only incidentally to do with athletics. It is the failure of an academic institution to enforce academic standards. The accrediting body that oversees UNC should be looking very carefully at what it will have to do to penalize the institution and ensure that this never happens again. Academic probation would be the very least that should happen.

 

[winlots]

The paper being written for a student surely happens, but is not a systemic program, nor likely something that any assistant coach performs. Schools are actually pretty careful about that stuff and professors are generally not dumb either.
I was at a wedding last weekend and a relative and his girl friend are both tutors at Syracuse for the football team - they are not even allowed to put a mark on a student's draft and the athlete's academic area where they meet is now set up with bolted down monitors all facing a wall of oneway mirror glass with a monitoring space on the far side. (They said their students were really nice, if less than intellectual giants, and really were trying hard. Sort of a nice review. And having both taught HS kids who they could intimidate, the guy said he now had to figure out a way to get the same effect - he now threatens to start crying if the 6'6 300 pounder doesn't get the work done!)
I am not nieve in thinking that academic fraud is not occurring at every university and that it occurs more often relative to scholarship athletes, but ... the cases that have come to light, and they do come to light with some regularity (often without major publicity) are nothing compared to the numbers and length of time involved at UNC. Most involve a few athletes and one or two misguided tutors/assistant coaches. Others involve a single instance of a test getting out before it was administered and the circulation of a cheat sheet. The other area is plagiarism which involves (mostly) a single person and those are almost never publicized, but are real. (One of things that really shocked me in the email in the UNC case is the administrator and the ethics head discussing the likely plagiarism (self-plagiarism is the same 'crime' as appropriating others work) so blandly.)[/QUOTE

UcM: not exactly certain what you are saying in the first sentence of your final paragraph re "every university," so I'm not sure if we're on the same page of not on this particular issue. I think we are in agreement if I read you correctly. Either way, I do want to say that, at least in my day, I never saw or heard of any instance of athletes getting any academic slack at the university I attended, and I was in a position to know. I'd be very surprised if it was any different there today.

 

[Vowelguy]

This really has only incidentally to do with athletics .

Yeah sure.

By the way, I am suddenly cash poor and must sell some of my assets, including a fine transportation bridge in Brooklyn. I can give you a great deal! Interested?

 

[triaddukefan]

The other great UNC bashing thread got hijacked and ultimately locked...... hopefully this thread will remain focused on bashing UNC

 

[Zorro]

Maybe he will have better luck this time.

http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=7235358&src=desktop

Should this be considered the incident that started the whole ball of yarn to unravel?

 

[Wonkster]

An ex-footballer files a class-action lawsuit claiming he was denied a proper education.

This closet in North Carolina has more shoes dropping in it than Imelda Marcos' dressing room.

 

[Zorro]

A lot of commentators seem to be making much of the fact that 53% of the students involved were not athletes. It would be very interesting to see the time trajectory on this. My hunch is that it started out as athletes only and then when word started leaking out to the Greeks they had to let them in to try to keep the lid on. Anybody seen anything on this?

 

[Wonkster]

.
Think this disaster might go as far as disaccreditation?

 

[cockhrnleghrn]

.
Think this disaster might go as far as disaccreditation?

No, but I'd like to see them sweat.

 

[j66kicker]

According to academic standards he should have never been admitted into the school. But, he was able to use his athletic ability to get himself into a very good school like most other people do around the country. However, I just don't buy this lawsuit from this guy. If he was so concerned about academics why didn't he stick up for himself when he was in school?

Agree that he must ("should"?) have known the classes were fake, but I don't think the whole situation should move in the direction of, "The students should have known better, regardless of what their academic advisors instructed them to do", and blaming it on the students.

 

[tomcat]

Yeah sure.

By the way, I am suddenly cash poor and must sell some of my assets, including a fine transportation bridge in Brooklyn. I can give you a great deal! Interested?

Perhaps I did not express myself clearly. Here's the deal: The athletics department could never, repeat, never been able to do what it did if there were not a fundamental failure in the area of academics. Don't forget that athletes were not the only ones benefiting from these non-classes. There were others as well. And any effort to make this happen on the part of athletics would have been squelched if the academic folks were either a) Paying attention or B) Not complicit in the dealings.

I guess I kind of expect athletics to try to get away with whatever they can for the athletes, at UNC and elsewhere. I expect the folks in charge of academic standards to maintain said standards, even in the face of athletic directors and crazy alumni.

 

[Zorro]

I think that the implication, SR. cat, is that it has been and continues to be unfortunate for UNC and many of the denizens thereof. And my wife and I both, who spent the majority of our lives in higher education, including some administration, do not beliive 1) that this could have operated for 18 years without one helluva lot of complicity, either active or culpably passive, on the part of the administration, or that 2) most universities are equally guilty. Undoubtedly shenanegans are perpetrated in the incredibly vigorous efforts to attract and keep eligible young people of dubious academic talent, but the scale of the UNC fraud simply boggles the mind. After the APB ruling this week, I do not see how the NCAA can now credibly avoid dishing out a similar or more severe penalty to UNC. I also do not see how the Southern Association can avoid levying severe sanctions on UNC. Completely jerking their accreditation would, of course, be entirely too severe, but some heavy-duty probabion would seem to be unavoidable.

One other pont; I keep reading that there were 3100 enrollments involved over the 18 years. That is not correct. There were 3100 STUDENTS(?) involved, many of whom took multiple phony classes. The total number of student classes is somewhere between 10k and 20k.

 

[tomcat]

I'm with elzorrogris on this one. Compared to the need for academic sanctions to be leveled against this institution, I don't think athletic sanctions (while still important) amount to a hill of beans. End this behavior on the academic side, and the athletic departments will have no way to do what they've been doing.

 

[Zorro]

I really think that they (the Southern Association) have to level penalties severe enough to put the fear of God in any other Dept chair, Dean or other administrator who might be tempted to "cut the kids a little slack". I will follow this with interest.

 

[pap49cba]

04-05 title team had multiple players taking phoney courses.... LINK

 

[msf22b]

NCAA doesn't have to investigate, just read the newspaper.
Prediction: UNC will offer a plea.

 

[UcMiami]

Does anyone know what the SACS can do according to their by-laws? Can put a school on probation or in some way level penalties or are their options simply accredited or not accredited? We have seen that the NCAA can sort of make up any rules they want on the fly they want to and have latitude to penalize in any way they want, but I suspect the SACS has much less latitude.

 

[msf22b]

Does anyone know what the SACS can do according to their by-laws? Can put a school on probation or in some way level penalties or are their options simply accredited or not accredited? We have seen that the NCAA can sort of make up any rules they want on the fly they want to and have latitude to penalize in any way they want, but I suspect the SACS has much less latitude.

Their website lists their core values…UNC seems to fall considerably short
___________________________________
Core Values: The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has six core values. They are:
Integrity
Continuous Quality ImprovementPeer Review/Self-regulation
AccountabilityStudent Learning
Transparency
__________________

Also has public disclosures that indicate a range of reprimands including probation

 

[UcMiami]

N&O link above
During the season that the UNC men’s basketball team made its run to the 2005 NCAA championship, its players accounted for 35 enrollments in classes that didn’t meet and yielded easy, high grades awarded by the architect of the university’s academic scandal.

And the breakdown - 9 total enrollments in the fall semester, followed by 26 total enrollments in the spring - that works out to basically 2 per player on the team though at least one player was taking three in the spring semester.

 

[Zorro]

Their website lists their core values…UNC seems to fall considerably short
___________________________________
Core Values: The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has six core values. They are:
Integrity
Continuous Quality ImprovementPeer Review/Self-regulation
AccountabilityStudent Learning
Transparency
__________________

Also has public disclosures that indicate a range of reprimands including probation

Yup. Looks like UNC went oh for four.