NCAA Approves Sham Classes for Athletes

[Madbiker]

With the UNC ruling, the NCAA has now basically approved running sham academic classes -- primarily for athletes as long as you allow (but unofficially control) the general student population to also have access to the classes. I' have been saying for many months that UNC would skate. The driving force behind this isn't that UNC is special. It's because many other large "athletic factory" schools are doing the same thing. Have been doing it and continue to do it. The Commissioner of the SEC who chaired this committee knows that. Probably several SEC schools (we all know which ones) have made a science of doing this. So if they came down hard on UNC, all these other big name money makers for the NCAA would be in jeopardy. Now they can all breathe easy.

The lesson is simple. If you cheat to keep athletes eligible -- like writing papers for them or giving them answers to exams -- you are going to be punished severely in the name of academic integrity. But it's perfectly OK to have your academic staff set up sham courses that require no papers or any work and because the NCAA has now officially proclaimed it is not their purview to judge the "quality" of academic classes. So if any university with big time athletics doesn't already offer sham classes for athletes -- they will very shortly.

 

[SBU72]

My suggestion is for SU to change its grading system for certain majors so that an F gets a 2, D=3, a C=4, B=5 and A=6. So even a student who gets all F, will have his GPA reported to the NCAA a 2.0 Limiting the "class" size and number limits the impact overall.

 

[Oakland]

The other thing that can be done is to help non-athletes with papers, tests, etc., so that you can say the benefit was not just for athletes. Apparently, if SU could have shown that one other person besides FAB had help will a paper, there would have be no violation.

With the UNC ruling, the NCAA has now basically approved running sham academic classes -- primarily for athletes as long as you allow (but unofficially control) the general student population to also have access to the classes. I' have been saying for many months that UNC would skate. The driving force behind this isn't that UNC is special. It's because many other large "athletic factory" schools are doing the same thing. Have been doing it and continue to do it. The Commissioner of the SEC who chaired this committee knows that. Probably several SEC schools (we all know which ones) have made a science of doing this. So if they came down hard on UNC, all these other big name money makers for the NCAA would be in jeopardy. Now they can all breathe easy.

The lesson is simple. If you cheat to keep athletes eligible -- like writing papers for them or giving them answers to exams -- you are going to be punished severely in the name of academic integrity. But it's perfectly OK to have your academic staff set up sham courses that require no papers or any work and because the NCAA has now officially proclaimed it is not their purview to judge the "quality" of academic classes. So if any university with big time athletics doesn't already offer sham classes for athletes -- they will very shortly.

 

[tbonezone]

if no attendance required classes are ok with the ncaa and changing the grades if you do submit something then... there are no rules. everythings legal if it's offered to all students. we should never face another violation.

 

[GFTakedown]

What is interesting is the NCAA was instrumental about shutting down high schools that were just diploma mills by making their players ineligible for college. How is that any different than what UNC did?

NCAA Bans 15 'Diploma Mills'

 

[Noexcuse]

With the UNC ruling, the NCAA has now basically approved running sham academic classes -- primarily for athletes as long as you allow (but unofficially control) the general student population to also have access to the classes. I' have been saying for many months that UNC would skate. The driving force behind this isn't that UNC is special. It's because many other large "athletic factory" schools are doing the same thing. Have been doing it and continue to do it. The Commissioner of the SEC who chaired this committee knows that. Probably several SEC schools (we all know which ones) have made a science of doing this. So if they came down hard on UNC, all these other big name money makers for the NCAA would be in jeopardy. Now they can all breathe easy.

The lesson is simple. If you cheat to keep athletes eligible -- like writing papers for them or giving them answers to exams -- you are going to be punished severely in the name of academic integrity. But it's perfectly OK to have your academic staff set up sham courses that require no papers or any work and because the NCAA has now officially proclaimed it is not their purview to judge the "quality" of academic classes. So if any university with big time athletics doesn't already offer sham classes for athletes -- they will very shortly.

Yeah that's all well and good but the NCAA set up a commission to look into this. Condi Rice is on the commission and she had an oil tanker named after her.

 

[tbonezone]

ncaa are total idiots if they don't realize what was going on here. total idiots. no other justification needed.
academic requirements were jettisoned for athletic performance. if that ain't illegal then what are you policing ?

 

[73CAV]

This is how it has always been. It is just that the UNC case has had a very high profile. Years ago, Andy Katzenmoyer, an All American linebacker at Ohio State, had to take three summer school classes in order to maintain his eligibility in the fall. I am not convinced that his classes required more effort than the sham classes at UNC demanded. When Dexter Manley was at Oklahoma State, he completed four years of coursework, did not receive a degree, and left the school functionally illiterate. Thankfully, the NCAA now requires progress towards a degree. Nonetheless, it has never tried to dictate what sort of courses an institution might offer. Hopefully, given the PR nightmare created by the UNC scandal and the FBI investigations, the NCAA can create some mechanisms to address these issues. The simplest, and probably easiest to enforce, would be to set standards on the percentage of scholarship athletes found in any given course, and to require reporting of such to the NCAA. (If 75% to 80% of the enrollees in any given class are players, that ought to raise a very red flag.) Also, there needs to be oversight, by someone outside the AD's office, for on-line classes being taken by athletes.

 

[RF2044]

ncaa are total idiots if they don't realize what was going on here. total idiots. no other justification needed.
academic requirements were jettisoned for athletic performance. if that ain't illegal then what are you policing ?

100% true.

 

[tbonezone]

that's how i read it. tell me the academic advisors monitoring these "student" athletes didn't know what was going on with the UNC black studies scandal and didn't use it to keep tar heels eligible . total BS they don't get sanctions

 

[JoeSU]

In essence, the NCAA took the "Pontius Pilate" approach.

 

[knicks07]

With the UNC ruling, the NCAA has now basically approved running sham academic classes -- primarily for athletes as long as you allow (but unofficially control) the general student population to also have access to the classes. I' have been saying for many months that UNC would skate. The driving force behind this isn't that UNC is special. It's because many other large "athletic factory" schools are doing the same thing. Have been doing it and continue to do it. The Commissioner of the SEC who chaired this committee knows that. Probably several SEC schools (we all know which ones) have made a science of doing this. So if they came down hard on UNC, all these other big name money makers for the NCAA would be in jeopardy. Now they can all breathe easy.

The lesson is simple. If you cheat to keep athletes eligible -- like writing papers for them or giving them answers to exams -- you are going to be punished severely in the name of academic integrity. But it's perfectly OK to have your academic staff set up sham courses that require no papers or any work and because the NCAA has now officially proclaimed it is not their purview to judge the "quality" of academic classes. So if any university with big time athletics doesn't already offer sham classes for athletes -- they will very shortly.

All Universities and colleges are subject to a major academic accrediting body for academic accreditation. There are 7 of those, by region, Syracuse belongs to Middle States. UNC belongs to Southern Assoc of Colleges and School (SACS). SACS performed an investigation a couple of years ago and hit UNC with 12 months probation, including integrity, program content, control of athletics, academic support services. UNC is already off probation, done and over for them. So while it seemed like a big deal, it really had little effect. They are not going to shut down a major research University as well as enter battle with state legislature of NC over a small set of classes relative to total course offerings. Just funny that the NCAA charged UNC with lack of academic control while SACS said UNC lost control of Athletics.

Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, said in an email that there is no new evidence.
“We acted two years ago,” she wrote in an email Monday. “Nothing new has occurred for us to do anything else.”
Over the weekend, Wheelan said that the commission would review the NCAA report to “determine if the institution is out of compliance with any of our Principles of Accreditation. If we find that they are, we will investigate.” That review is apparently complete and no action will be taken.

SACS last year removed the university from probationary status, saying it had put safeguards in place to prevent such a situation from happening again. The university had mounted an effort to institute changes and document them for the accrediting body. In 2012, after the scandal first arose, the organization required UNC to undergo extensive monitoring. A second review was launched in 2014, after the scope of the academic misconduct was revealed in the Wainstein Report, by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein. That ultimately led to the probation.
The university is currently already undergoing its regular 10-year review by the accreditor.

 

[reedny]

All Universities and colleges are subject to a major academic accrediting body for academic accreditation. There are 7 of those, by region, Syracuse belongs to Middle States. UNC belongs to Southern Assoc of Colleges and School (SACS). SACS performed an investigation a couple of years ago and hit UNC with 12 months probation, including integrity, program content, control of athletics, academic support services. UNC is already off probation, done and over for them. So while it seemed like a big deal, it really had little effect. They are not going to shut down a major research University as well as enter battle with state legislature of NC over a small set of classes relative to total course offerings. Just funny that the NCAA charged UNC with lack of academic control while SACS said UNC lost control of Athletics.

Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, said in an email that there is no new evidence.
“We acted two years ago,” she wrote in an email Monday. “Nothing new has occurred for us to do anything else.”
Over the weekend, Wheelan said that the commission would review the NCAA report to “determine if the institution is out of compliance with any of our Principles of Accreditation. If we find that they are, we will investigate.” That review is apparently complete and no action will be taken.

SACS last year removed the university from probationary status, saying it had put safeguards in place to prevent such a situation from happening again. The university had mounted an effort to institute changes and document them for the accrediting body. In 2012, after the scandal first arose, the organization required UNC to undergo extensive monitoring. A second review was launched in 2014, after the scope of the academic misconduct was revealed in the Wainstein Report, by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein. That ultimately led to the probation.
The university is currently already undergoing its regular 10-year review by the accreditor.

And that's all interesting. But the fact remains that 10 kids on UNC's 2005 NC team were AF-AM majors. That means that, in all probability, they were kept eligible (like many other UNC athletes over a 15+ year stretch) by virtue of an academic sham ... no-show, automatic A classes. That's worse by an order of magnitude than writing a single paper for a SA - or adding footnotes. The fact that it was someone in the philosophy department instead of someone in the AD is meaningless. The UNC professor clearly performed special grade advocacy for athletes and steered them to the fake classes to allow them to meet NCAA course requirements. It's a sham, pure and simple. And why low-level academic assistance (at SU) was deemed an "impermissible benefit" and mass-scale academic assistance at UNC was overlooked remains a existential-level contradiction for the NCAA.

 

[73CAV]

And that's all interesting. But the fact remains that 10 kids on UNC's 2005 NC team were AF-AM majors. That means that, in all probability, they were kept eligible (like many other UNC athletes over a 15+ year stretch) by virtue of an academic sham ... no-show, automatic A classes. That's worse by an order of magnitude than writing a single paper for a SA - or adding footnotes. The fact that it was someone in the philosophy department instead of someone in the AD is meaningless. The UNC professor clearly performed special grade advocacy for athletes and steered them to the fake classes to allow them to meet NCAA course requirements. It's a sham, pure and simple. And why low-level academic assistance (at SU) was deemed an "impermissible benefit" and mass-scale academic assistance at UNC was overlooked remains a existential-level contradiction for the NCAA.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. That UNC professor did this for everyone who enrolled in the course. It didn't matter whether they were athletes or not. At every school in the country, most of the students know which courses are guts and which are ball busters. On athletic teams and in fraternities, upperclassmen constantly direct newbies into the easier classes. I get it that UNC enjoyed a competitive advantage because of these classes. At the same time, it could be suggested that Syracuse enjoys a competitive advantage over West Point and Annapolis because all Syracuse freshmen are not required to take calculus. Granted, that sort of an example is a stretch, but it illustrates the problem the NCAA has. If there is rogue professor at any school, it is still an academic issue even if it does benefit scholarship athletes. The problem becomes the NCAA's if it benefits ONLY scholarship athletes. What is disgraceful is how UNC's administration allowed this to continue for so long, and this is what the NCAA must address. It must find a way of holding schools accountable for the academic integrity of the players. Currently, beyond reasonable progress towards a degree, such a mechanism does not exist.

 

[reedny]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. That UNC professor did this for everyone who enrolled in the course. It didn't matter whether they were athletes or not. At every school in the country, most of the students know which courses are guts and which are ball busters. On athletic teams and in fraternities, upperclassmen constantly direct newbies into the easier classes. I get it that UNC enjoyed a competitive advantage because of these classes. At the same time, it could be suggested that Syracuse enjoys a competitive advantage over West Point and Annapolis because all Syracuse freshmen are not required to take calculus. Granted, that sort of an example is a stretch, but it illustrates the problem the NCAA has. If there is rogue professor at any school, it is still an academic issue even if it does benefit scholarship athletes. The problem becomes the NCAA's if it benefits ONLY scholarship athletes. What is disgraceful is how UNC's administration allowed this to continue for so long, and this is what the NCAA must address. It must find a way of holding schools accountable for the academic integrity of the players. Currently, beyond reasonable progress towards a degree, such a mechanism does not exist.

Agree generally, but disagree that the Philo professor at UNC treated athletes and non-athletes equally. If you read the first NOV, the allegations detail how the professor (of Ethics, no less) and the other assistant (Crowder) actually contacted professors on behalf of athletes to let them know what grades the athletes needed to stay eligible. That is special treatment any way you slice it. So while you may be right that lots of people gravitate towards gut courses, when you have a championship team in which 10 of the 13 scholarship players major in the same fake-course department, you have a serious academic fraud problem IMO>

 

[reedny]

What is interesting is the NCAA was instrumental about shutting down high schools that were just diploma mills by making their players ineligible for college. How is that any different than what UNC did?

NCAA Bans 15 'Diploma Mills'

And that is a (another) colossal fraud going on through the NCAA -- that HS transcripts, especially those from foreign students -- are put under a microscope for quality. Then 1.5 milliseconds after admission to college, suddenly the NCAA could care less about academic quality and any fake course will do. I've given up hope that the NCAA is going to change the academic sham rule. It's not going to happen unless the influence of the big money schools (p5) is diminished, and I don't see that happening ATS. There's too much at stake for them to step up and do the right thing -- apply the same standard to fake college classes that they do to HS diploma mills.