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The University of North Carolina cheating scandal is unprecedented in size and in terms of the duration of the offenses. The scheme also included many accomplices in the schools administrative ranks. According to this Forbes article, the scandal began in the early 90s during the dominant basketball years of coach Dean Smith--although Smith was not personally implicated.
Allegedly, 9 staffers from the University will be fired. We'll see if that really happens.
Locally we have recently seen the lengths folks will go to in order to field competitive teams. Rules will be broken and liberties will be taken in order to win. And we've seen other college scandals before revolving around athletics. I wonder if thorough examinations were made at all the universities in the country-if similar sorts of schemes would be found all over the place?
Pretty sad but I bet this is common. At least UNC decided to take a deep dive on this to get to the bottom of it.
From the Forbes article:
"As delineated in the 131-page report, the cheating regime was overseen by former Department of African and Afro-American (AFAM) studies chair, Julius Nyang’oro, professor of record for many of the bogus courses (including a laughable 300 independent study courses per year). The scheme was implemented by Nyango’oro’s assistant Deborah Crowder, a nonacademic in charge of creating and grading the phantom classes. The report notes that, often, the only requirement for students participating in the “shadow curriculum” was to submit one paper (usually plagiarized) per class. Technically labeled “lecture classes” to circumvent UNC’s limit on “independent study” courses (an easier way to enable academic fraud), these classes involved zero lectures, zero work and zero attendance. Instead, they were known around campus as “paper classes.”
