http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 I wonder how much this goes on around all campuses. I am not naive enough to think that student athletes (football and basketball in particular) are taking the hardest classes or even getting legitimate grades. But taking fake classes and getting grades seems to be pretty bad. And it looks like it has been going on for nearly 20 years. Death penalty?
I don't think they're taking fake classes at Tennessee. Can't be sure though. I know a lot of them came through my department, and some even flunked. Honestly, easy classes are not hard to find at UT. There is no need to fake it. Just get the right professors.
But ya, fake classes AND grades seems more egregious than normal cheating. Students can't create fake classes.
I took a class at cal that was at least 50% football players where all I had to do was write a 2 page paper and go on a field trip. I got an A+. and that's at CAL. I can't imagine what happens at schools that actually give a shit about football.
Reduce football scholarships by 2 next year, basketball team is ban from 1st round NCAA tournament game in North Carolina, must play in Midwest Region.
Those kind of interim classes exist everywhere I know of. I don't have a problem with them, as long as they are only a tiny part of the total credits earned. It isn't bad to have an experience. My adviser takes a class down to Mexico for a month every year. I helped take one in the mountains for a week earlier this year. We collected specimens, taught about the ecology and geology of the place, and took some sediment cores. All they had to do was participate, stay engaged, keep a journal, and then take a short little test. And this is a format my adviser had as a student at Cal. I don't think every class has to be a traditional paper/exam class. But obviously, we are talking about something different at UNC.
the problem we had was that the football players were taking almost all those sort of classes to remain eligible and doing nothing to actually progress in their major so the grad rate was shit. UNC was smart enough to get one of the departments to lead the charge so they could dump people in the major.
I can't see how this isn't an institutional lack of control, but the ncaa has been a joke with these penalties of late.
I grew up a UNC basketball fan and this is an unprecedented level of disgusting to me. If everything being reported checks out as accurate, then they deserve the death penalty. And for the record, I would say the same about any school including UT that did this kind of injustice to both the legacy of academic excellence and to the student athletes.
I think the UNC thing is insane because they weren't even taking real classes. There's nothing wrong with them taking more joke classes than the average student, but UNC is idiotic for allowing this to happen. From what I've heard UT and Auburn do things similarly, and I'd imagine it's the same at most SEC schools. The kids take real classes and are required to attend them, they just get an unbelievable amount of "academic support" which doesn't necessarily amount to them not doing their own work, but allows them to pass or do well when otherwise they may not.
Yes, this is common. And it probably isn't right, but it isn't as blatantly ridiculous as the UNC allegations.
The schools have to at least make it believable or appear believable that athletes don't play by different rules than regular students. I can see how this stuff UNC did would fly 20 years ago, but it just doesn't work now. How their athletic department didn't see this getting out or finding a smarter way to bend the rules for athletes is shocking to me.
that, and an athlete could accidentally learn some stuff and get some sort of education the other way. With fake classes that never happened with no grades, they'd be better off randomly browsing wikipedia than going to that university.
I had a kid, who is involved in this scandal fairly prominently, as a student and let's just say I was not surprised that this occurred from what I heard from this kid's mouth after his recruiting trip there.
