The scale of an academic scandal involving bogus classes and inflated grades at the University of North Carolina was far more widespread than previously reported and included about 1,500 athletes who got easy As and Bs over a span of nearly two decades, according to an investigation released Wednesday.
At least nine university employees were fired or under disciplinary review, and the question now becomes what, if anything, the NCAA will do. Penalties could range from fewer scholarships to vacated wins.
Most of the athletes involved were football players or members of the school’s cherished basketball program, which won three of its five national titles during the scandal.
Athletic director Bubba Cunningham wouldn’t speculate on any possible sanctions.
In all, about 3,100 students enrolled in classes they didn’t have to show up for in what was deemed a “shadow curriculum” within the former African and Afro-American Studies department from 1993 to 2011, the report by former high-ranking U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein found.
Many at the university had hoped Wainstein’s eight-month investigation would bring some closure to the long-running scandal. Instead, it found more far-reaching academic fraud than previous investigations by the NCAA and the school.
The scandal reached back to the final years of legendary men’s basketball coach Dean Smith’s tenure, as well Mack Brown’s time as football coach before leaving for Texas and John Swofford’s stint as athletic director before becoming Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner.
The NCAA reopened its probe over the summer. The focus was courses that required only a research paper that was often scanned quickly by a secretary, who gave out high grades regardless of the quality of work. The report also outlined how counselors for athletes steered struggling students to the classes, where they made up half or more of the enrollment.
Chancellor Carol Folt wouldn’t identify the terminated employees or those facing disciplinary review.
Faculty and administration officials missed or looked past red flags, such as unusually high numbers of independent study course enrollments in the department, the report said.
“By the mid-2000s, these classes had become a primary — if not the primary — way that struggling athletes kept themselves from having eligibility problems,” the report said.
Unlike previous inquiries by former Gov. Jim Martin and the school, Wainstein had the cooperation of former department chairman Julius Nyang’oro and retired office administrator Deborah Crowder — the two people at the center of the scandal.
Nyang’oro was indicted in December on a felony fraud charge, though it was dropped after he agreed to help Wainstein. Crowder was never charged.
Crowder, though not a faculty member, started the classes to help struggling students not long after Nyang’oro became chairman in 1992, according to the report.
After Crowder’s retirement in 2009, Nyang’oro met requests from football counselors to continue the sham classes and graded papers “with an eye to boosting” a student’s grade-point average, according to the report.
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