Yes, UNC committed academic fraud for 18 years in its “paper courses,” but no, it’s not the NCAA’s job to punish them.
For those who haven’t been following one of the biggest investigations in college sports over the last seven years, here’s the rundown: For the past 18 years, the University of Northern Carolina at Chapel Hill has been hosting so-called “paper classes” in its Department of African and Afro-American studies. These classes had no instructor, no class meetings and the paper submitted at the end was graded by a secretary.
The purpose of these fraudulent classes was to boost the grades of athletes who might otherwise be academically ineligible for NCAA play. Indeed, more than half of the 3,000 students who benefitted from the grade-inflating classes were athletes.
Not all of them were though, and that means it’s not a NCAA issue. The NCAA can only punish a member school for treating athletes different than its other students. If the NCAA decided to punish UNC simply for having a weak curriculum, it would need to be qualified to make judgments about curricula, and that’s not what it is as an organization.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) is the accrediting agency that oversees North Carolina. The SACSCOC is the organization that should be taking action against UNC for this academic fraud.’
Of course, SACSCOC did take action. UNC was put on a one-year probation, ending in July of last year. Some enforcement.
But what more could be done? Most punishments for the school would ultimately only hurt current players and students, who have never been exposed to these fraudulent courses.
Of course, higher officials could take the blame. Throughout the process, only low-level staff has been fired for their roles in the process. But drawing those direct lines of culpability is hard.
Ultimately, what UNC did was clearly wrong. But figuring out to hold the university accountable for its errors is a little more difficult.
