Wainstein Report into UNC Academic Fraud Released

kg01

kg01

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Latest report into the academic fraud at UNC. I realize they won't be punished but this is still interesting to see exactly what they were doing.

http://advancingrefor.staging.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/UNC-FINAL-REPORT.pdf

A few interesting tidbits:
Over the 18 years these classes existed, Crowder and Nyang’oro were
responsible for offering 188 different lecture classes as well as hundreds of
individual independent studies in the “paper class” format – with no class
attendance or faculty involvement, and with Crowder managing the class and
liberally grading the papers. Through this scheme, over 3,100 students
received one or more semesters of deficient instruction and were awarded
high grades that often had little relationship to the quality of their work.
Click to expand...

The inflated grades from the paper classes had a significant impact on
student and student-athlete GPAs and academic standing. Each paper class
grade increased a student’s GPA, on average, by approximately .03 grade
points. The significance of this effect could be seen in the number of
students for whom the paper class grade made the difference in reaching or
not reaching the 2.0 grade threshold. In the case of 329 students, the grade
they received in a paper class provided the “GPA boost” that either kept or
pushed their GPA above the 2.0 level for a semester. For 81 of those
students, that GPA boost was the margin that gave them the 2.0 GPA that
allowed them to graduate.
Click to expand...
 
John

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Seems like academic counselors at UNC were complicit but don't think any of the coaches were. In other words, the coaches knew there were "paper classes" but they assumed that they were normal and trusted that the university was doing the right thing.

This is probably the most eye opening bullet point from the report:
Several of the ASPSA football counselors grew dependent on the paper
classes and were very concerned when Crowder announced her upcoming
retirement. They immediately took steps to prepare for the end of the paper
classes. They instructed players to submit their papers before Crowder’s
departure to receive the benefit of her liberal grading; they warned the
football coaches that with Crowder’s retirement they no longer had access to
classes “that met degree requirements in which [the football players] didn’t
go to class…didn’t take notes [or] have to stay awake…didn’t have to meet
with professors [and] didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with
the material;” and they undertook an effort to persuade Nyang’oro to
continue the paper classes. They succeeded in getting Nyang’oro to offer a
few classes, but not before the football team’s GPA fell to its lowest point in
ten years.
Click to expand...
 
kg01

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One case is particularly illustrative of this phenomenon. In Spring 2006, Professor Bereket
Selassie taught a lecture class on North-East Africa, AFRI 124, with 25 enrolled students. At the
end of the semester, Professor Selassie recorded a grade of AB (an incomplete grade that technically
means “absent from the exam”) for a football player who never attended the lectures or the exam.
When we asked Professor Selassie about this student, he was flabbergasted to see that the AB for
that football player had been changed to an A- through a grade change form
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We then interviewed both Crowder and the football player and learned that he was one of
Crowder’s add-on students. She had placed the football player on Professor Selassie’s class roll, given him a paper topic and graded his paper Crowder changed the grade from an AB to an A- using a grade change form and signed Nyang’oro’s name as instructor.
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Now that's bold.
 
Northeast Stinger

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Unreal. I think this is why Tech has always been somewhat ambivalent toward its sports teams, particularly football. When I say "ambivalent" I am not referring to those who wanted to end the football program or downgrade what division we play in but those who don't mind seeing the team win and represent the school well but who are always going to be suspicious about the potential of the football program to take over academics and therefore are grudging in their response from the athletic department when it comes to resources and support.
 
John

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Are the academic advisors that are specifically assigned to athletes (not sure if specific advisors are assigned to athletes of specific sports or not) fall under the GTAA umbrella or if they report directly to the school?
 
kg01

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So was Rashard McCants telling the truth after all? I read Williams forbid his players from being placed in these classes after they won the title. Not sure how the school can say the head coaches were unaware of this scam.
 
John

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kg01 said:
So was Rashard McCants telling the truth after all? I read Williams forbid his players from being placed in these classes after they won the title. Not sure how the school can say the head coaches were unaware of this scam.
Click to expand...
Here are what I thought were relevant about this:
Williams explained that he learned about independent studies and AFAM paper classes at some point, but he was not
concerned because he trusted the University to put on legitimate classes. Williams stated that in
2006, after noticing that many of his players were AFAM majors, he and Holladay discussed
encouraging their players to pursue other majors. Williams stated that he thought that the athletes
were becoming AFAM majors because their teammates and friends were all AFAM majors.
Click to expand...
Baddour recalled hearing from Roy Williams about McCants’ four independent studies courses in
Spring 2005, but does not recall when he and Williams had this conversation. He thinks it was
sometime after the Spring 2005 semester. Baddour recalled that Williams asked Baddour whether
the number of independent studies McCants had taken troubled him, and Baddour replied that it did
trouble him and that he wondered how the college had allowed it to happen.
Click to expand...
The way I'm reading it, the coaches knew of these "paper classes" but they didn't know they were fraudulent courses and that the grades were just handed out by the Crowder lady. Looks like Williams did raise the issue with Baddour at some point about whether or not it was normal for McCants to have so many independent study courses and Baddour didn't do anything with that info.
 
jeffgt14

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Sounds like Williams got stuck in a Jim Tressel situation. He knew what was going on but at the same time didn’t want to throw his players under the bus.
 
Whiskey_Clear

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Article I read indicated additional sanctions from the NCAA could be forthcoming. Which means another slap on the wrist at the most for blatant cheating.
 
awbuzz

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kg01 said:
So was Rashard McCants telling the truth after all? I read Williams forbid his players from being placed in these classes after they won the title. Not sure how the school can say the head coaches were unaware of this scam.
Click to expand...

Surprise!!!
 
daBuzz

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Nah. Nothing will happen. Part of it happened under Swofford's tenure as AD. He'll help make sure that any punishment will be farcical.
 

WreckinGT

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Yeah, like everyone else, I would be pretty shocked if anything came from this. Some kind of slap on the wrist at most.
 

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