Jay M. Smith and Mary Willingham provide an analysis of the
University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) academics-athletics scandal that began
in 2010 from their perspectives as UNC employees. Willingham was a tutor in the Academic
Support Program for Student-Athletes who went public with claims of academic
fraud at UNC. Smith was a professor of
history who researched these academic irregularities and pressed the UNC
administration and faculty to formally investigate the issue and implement
reform.
What began as an investigation of football players receiving improper
benefits, including gifts and contact with sports agents, quickly spread to
uncovering examples of academic misconduct, with tutors from the Academic
Support Program providing improper assistance to student-athletes. Further investigation uncovered widespread
academic fraud especially within the African and Afro-American Studies
(AFRI/AFAM) program where “paper classes” were being offered with large
student-athlete enrollments. These
classes, which usually did not meet, only required that students submit a
research paper in order receive a passing grade, typically an A or B. In 2003-2004, AFRI/AFAM was offering almost
300 independent study sections, largely consisting of paper classes; enrollment
in one independent study course in 2001 topped out at 80 students. Further, creation and/or enrollment of these
sections was often supervised by the department’s administrative assistant with
little or no faculty oversight.
Although athletes were not the only students enrolled in these courses,
they were well-represented. Academic
Support Program tutors took full advantage by not only steering
student-athletes to enroll in them, but also pressuring faculty and the
departmental administrative assistant to create additional courses and sections. The authors describe how student-athletes who
were not prepared academically to enroll at UNC received special exceptions for
admission to the institution and were assigned a tutor who not only assisted
them with coursework, but assigned both their majors and schedules, leaving the
students powerless to choose their own courses of study. Smith and Willingham argue that the university
should provide adequate and meaningful remedial support to students it has
chosen to admit as well as empower them to choose and follow their own academic
destinies in order to prepare them for life after their athletic careers end
(and as they are promised when recruited).
Another troubling aspect of the UNC academics-athletics scandal as
described by the authors was the complicity not only of the university’s
administration, but also of faculty governance in protecting the status quo. Smith and Willingham provide extensive details
regarding faculty and administrative discussions, investigations, reports and
decisions, all of which served to protect the Athletics Department from the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which was conducting its own review,
and further resulted in separating the UNC athletic enterprise from the
academic mission of the institution. In
fact, a report commissioned by former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin in
2012 supported previous internal UNC investigations that defined the fraud as
primarily an academic problem, largely absolving the Athletic Department and
its Academic Support Program of wrongdoing.
Willingham and Smith provide a thorough, if disturbing, view of big-time
college athletics from an academic affairs perspective within a prominent
research institution.
This volume is available to
request from the Ort Library catalog here:
http://catalog.umd.edu/docno=004560116. Click on
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