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Comment by csdrane | Hacker News Reader

Pretty shocking but I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's probably happening at a lot of other universities with big sports programs. UNC just happened to get caught.

Say, Stanford? http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/

Oh, its probably happening at most universities. I went to N.C. State and would be surprised if it WASN'T happening there too. I assume any school which gets a amount of money from their sports program would have something similar to UNC.

I also went to NC State, and I'm pretty sure that there's no department dedicated to this type of institutional corruption.

When I was at NCSU a college soccer player was on the roster in my "Learn Proofs for Math Majors" (MA225) course. He and a tutored showed up intermittently to the class. After some measurable time after the drop date he stopped showing up. I've always wondered if they let him drop it really late after the drop date or something shady was going on. Probably a late drop since it was soccer and not Football/Basketball. =)

This is the type of subjective stuff that happens to create an urban legend about "athletes getting an easy ride," though.

You don't really know what happened, but the eventual conclusion that most would take is:

1. he got a passing grade in spite of irregular class attendance. This is highly unlikely, but always seems to be the first place people go because "athletes get treated differently."

2. he got a late drop - which some consider "unfair," even in the light of late drops being available to any student for a whole host of reasons (For example, I dropped an entire semester due to depression, well after the drop date)

1. He stopped showing up for exams. Impossible to get a passing grade unless they made a lot of shady concessions. 2. Most likely, which is what I pointed out in my original comment.

The amazing thing at UNC is that it was just a rogue low-level employee (who picked up a couple of minor co-conspirators on the way), NOT a coordinated effort from the top of the university down.

I would imagine at many or most big sports schools, it is the latter.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter at UNC too. If so, UNC has done a world-class cover up so far by making it look like the former.

Throwing a couple of minions under the bus when things look bad is a time-tested strategy.

World-class? It may look that way from the outside to people unfamiliar with the university, but from the inside, this cover-up is ridiculously transparent. It's clear that most of the AFAM department knew what was going on, as well as the tutors and students.

I think you misunderstood my point. If it is "clear" that most of the AFAM department knew, the scandal has successfully been pinned on and contained to the AFAM department, and has not contaminated the highest levels of the university (i.e. Chancellor, Provost, athletics chairman, etc.).

While I don't believe UNC is necessarilly the only offender, this is not a case of 'everyones doing it'. There is a spectrum of practices which scholarship athletes typically use. Some are simple, practical and pretty much above reproach -- taking the fewest credits allowable during the season; taking academically rigorous course over the summer. Some start to get questionable -- at what point does intensive tutoring become the tutor actually doing the work. And then are no show classes and fake grades.

It's possible to be a scholarship athlete and get a real academic degree. I've seen people do it first hand. But it's hard -- you need to start with a decent academic background, and then work your ass off and most likely the social aspect of your college time will suffer.

That being said, even without the best academic background its possible to legitimately graduate if there is institutional support for it. The student might not have the most rigorous undergraduate course work, but they will have earned a degree equivalent to many non-athletes at the school. But for this to happen there needs to be institutional support both inside and outside the athletic department.

What's disturbing to me about UNC, is not just that they knowingly and persistently cheated, but that there behavior was purely and most basely exploitative -- they weren't even pretending to educate these students.

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