In the summer of 2007, a football player at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) took a 400-level course in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM) and received a B+. The student athlete was about to enter his freshman year at UNC—in the fall of 2007—yet he took an upper-level class before completing a 100- or 200-level course. A syllabus for the summer course did not exist. Most freshmen at UNC were not typically allowed to take 400-level courses without special permission from professors or advanced placement.
This and other cases were a part of the evidence in allegations of academic fraud against UNC in a report released by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2015. The report references “unchecked” coursework in which many student-athletes at UNC enrolled in fraudulent classes in the AFAM department or were given special advantages over the course of 18 years. As the report stated, “These were classes that involved no interaction with a faculty member, required no class attendance or course work other than a single paper, and resulted in consistently high grades.”
Julius Nyang’oro, professor and department chair of AFAM, oversaw this system. Deborah Crowder, who was a secretary with the department, operated the “paper” classes, often categorized as independent study courses. Several counselors in UNC’s Office of Academic Support Program for Student Athletes also knew of these classes. In some cases, the counselors steered students to them. These courses enabled student-athletes with poor academic performance to continue to be eligible to play sports. The courses were also open to non-athletes and became popular among fraternity members.
Ultimately, the scheme became so brazen that an academic counselor wrote an e-mail to Ms. Crowder that said: “Hi, Debby. Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs. I didn’t look at the paper but figured out it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn’t figure out from where! Thanks for whatever you can do.”
Many of the staff members implicated in the allegations were named by Mary Willingham, a learning specialist at UNC who went public with details about the ongoing operations. “I was part of something that I came to be ashamed of,” she said, “We weren’t serving the kids. We weren’t educating them properly. We were pushing them toward graduation, and that’s not the same as giving them an education.”
The concern over giving student-athletes an education raised larger questions about the balance between strong academics and strong athletics at major universities. Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, stated, “We pretend that it’s feasible to recruit high school graduates with minimal academic qualifications, give them a full-time job as a football or basketball player at a Division I NCAA school, and somehow have them get up to college-level reading and writing skills at the same time that they’re enrolled in college-level classes.” He added, “We’re kidding ourselves.”
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation organization placed UNC on probation for one year. UNC instituted reforms with higher governance standards, accountability for student-athlete support programs, and classroom and coursework audits. In 2017, the NCAA concluded its investigation. While the organization agreed that UNC was guilty of academic fraud, it did not punish the university or its athletic program. The NCAA’s infractions committee declared that it did not have the power to levy penalties against the university because the “paper” courses were not exclusive to student-athletes but were accessible to any UNC student.