An eight-month-long investigation into the University of North Carolina has found a staggering amount of academic fraud over an 18-year period, which directly benefitted the school’s athletes, mostly football and basketball players. The report, however, stopped short of implicating any athletic department official or coach, past or present.
The investigation, headed by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein, found that academic advisers in UNC’s athletic department colluded with specific academic faculty for the purposes of steering student-athletes to take classes meant to boost their grade point averages and keep them academically eligible in their sports.
Investigation Finds Academic Fraud at UNC; Fails To Implicate Specific Coaches
The report, which was released Wednesday, says the university provided classes from 1993 to 2011, that were overseen by Debby Crowder, a manager in the Afro-American Studies department. The classes allowed student-athletes to write a few papers during the course of an academic period rather than actually attend the classes, lectures or meet with professors. Crowder, who was not an actual professor, graded the papers and the student-athletes typically earned at least a B in the class. The report says many of the papers were plagiarized or padded with fluff, and rarely more than 10 pages long. It is estimated that at least 50% of the content for the papers was copied from somewhere else. Crowder was eventually made chair of the African and Afro-American Studies department until her retirement in 2009.
The investigation found that UNC had academic advisers in the school’s Academic Support Program for Student Athletes, (APSPA), that would make contact with Crowder and let her know how high an athlete’s grades needed to be in order to maintain academic eligibility. The report claims that those advisers for the student-athletes steered the players to the sham classes. In all, more than 3,100 students, with 47% of them being student athletes, received credit for the fake classes over the 18-year period.
The findings also say that when Crowder retired in 2009, the APSPA counselors convened a meeting in the university’s football offices, showing a PowerPoint presentation about the classes that the players had been taking. The presentation allegedly had a dire warning for the coaches in a slide that said the classes would no longer exist. The period of the fraudulent classes covers four UNC head football coaches; Mack Brown, Carl Torbush, John Bunting and Butch Davis. Only Bunting and Davis agreed to be interviewed for the investigation. The report says Bunting admitted to knowing about the classes and the success rate for athletes but denied knowing they were bogus classes. Davis told investigators he did not even remember the PowerPoint presentation done at the time of Crowder’s retirement.
Crowder’s successor as department chair, Julius Nyang’oro was urged by ASPSA to maintain the program. Nyang’oro, however was forced into retirement in 2012, as part of a previous internal investigation into the same fraud charges. UNC accused Nyang’oro of fraud for holding classes that didn’t exist, but they dropped the charges against him when he agreed to co-operate with that particular investigation in 2012.
This is, in fact, the third investigation into charges of academic fraud benefitting the athletic department in Chapel Hill. The Wainstein report, however, is the first one not run by UNC officials, and is the most in-depth of any of the investigations. Wainstein was brought in when previous internal investigations were accused of whitewashing over the fraud.
The issue of academic fraud for the benefit of athletes at North Carolina has been an ongoing topic for years. Former academic adviser Mary Willingham went public in media interviews in 2009 and 2010, questioning the literacy level of Tar Heel student-athletes. She has specifically named men’s basketball coach Roy Williams as someone who guided athletes to the sham courses. Willingham quit her job at UNC in 2010 and is in the midst of a civil suit with the university so her cooperation in the Wainstein investigation was limited to one brief meeting.
Former Tar Heel basketball players Rashad McCants has given media interviews over the past six months in which he claimed to likely have been academically ineligible for the Tar Heels’ run to the 2004-2005 national championship, because he had been provided with academically fraudulent grades. UNC has previously denied McCants’ claims.
The previous internal investigations were dealt with by UNC strictly as academic issues, not involving the athletic department. In response to the findings in the current investigation, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt issued a statement that she felt, “shocked and disappointed.” She pointed out that the university had already implemented 70 changes to its academic oversight as a result of the previous investigations.
Beyond that, the school had no other comment, as the NCAA has reopened its investigation into UNC. The NCAA issued a joint statement with UNC saying that the NCAA had received a copy of the Wainstein report and that it would review it, but would not comment any further at this time. The NCAA has previously let UNC self-impose sanctions stemming from previous investigations.
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