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Wainstein probe implicates over 3,000 students in University of North Carolina academic scandal Wainstein probe implicates over 3,000 students in University of North Carolina academic scandal
(about 3 hours later)
As a University of North Carolina “shadow curriculum” lasting almost 20 years neared its end in November 2009, two counselors who advise student-athletes on academics gave a presentation to the football coaching staff. Editor’s note: This story has been updated from an earlier version.
In that presentation, detailed in a report released today after an eight-month investigation led by attorney and former Department of Justice official Kenneth Wainstein, a slide appeared on a screen, indicating what might change because of the retirement in 2009 of a sole secretary in a sole department. An eight-month probe has estimated that the “shadow curriculum” that existed at the University of North Carolina from 1993 to 2011 offered a grade-point boost from phony coursework to more than 3,100 students, including a disproportionately high percentage of student-athletes.
That secretary, the slide indicated, had used her wide leeway in the African and Afro-American Studies Curriculum to forge a scheme for students in general but for student-athletes in high percentages, which had enabled the students to shore up grade-point averages and, in some cases, maintain athletic eligibility. The report, released Wednesday after an investigation led by attorney and former Department of Justice official Kenneth Wainstein, also provided the deepest reading to date on the link between student-athlete counselors and the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. In particular, it details a slide presentation to the North Carolina football staff in November 2009 that warned coaches that the “shadow curriculum” would desist because of the retirement of its designer.
The slide noted that counselors from the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes (ASPSA) had put athletes in “classes that met degree requirements in which: One slide from the presentation noted that counselors from the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes (ASPSA) read: “We put (athletes) in classes that met degree requirements in which:
- They didn’t go to class — They didn’t go to class
- They didn’t take notes or have to stay awake — They didn’t take notes or have to stay awake
- They didn’t have to meet with professors — They didn’t have to meet with professors
- They didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material.” — They didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material.”
In closing, the slide warned in capital letters that because of the secretary’s retirement, “THESE NO LONGER EXIST,” indicating that an effective mechanism for keeping players academically eligible would subside. The North Carolina head football coach at the time, Butch Davis, denied in Wainstein’s report that he could remember the slide. The slide then warned in capital letters: “THESE NO LONGER EXIST,” indicating that an effective mechanism for keeping athletes academically eligible had subsided. The North Carolina head football coach at the time, Butch Davis, denied in Wainstein’s report that he could remember the slide.
The new report, the third backed by the University of North Carolina ever since a cloud of possible academic fraud started forming in 2011 and has continued largely through the reporting of the Raleigh News & Observer, addresses a scandal during which Davis was fired in summer 2011, former basketball star Rashad McCants told ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” about a trail of “paper courses” that had not educated him and alleged that head coach Roy Williams had offered to help him “swap” one course for another, and 11 former basketball players and Williams publicly had rebutted McCants’ claims. North Carolina’s revered men’s basketball program won NCAA titles in 2005 (with McCants) and 2009. The alarm among some student-athlete counselors came at the retirement of Deborah Crowder, a secretary in the African and Afro-American Studies department. Crowder had begun the “shadow curriculum” about a year after Julius Nyang’oro became head of the department and practiced indifferent oversight, according to the report.
Wainstein’s report does not place heavy implication upon Williams, and in fact paints Williams as concerned toward his academic assistants that, after his arrival in 2003, too many of his players seemed to major in African and Afro-American Studies, a signal that counselors might be steering them toward that department. “She designed and offered what are called ‘paper classes,’” the Wainstein report reads. She would give the courses numbers, grade the final papers after a cursory check of proper length and sign Nyang’oro’s name to the grades.
As Wainstein’s report furthers upon a litany of prior reports, including that of former North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin released two years ago, the slide presentation marks an extent of the shadow program that grew across two decades under the umbrella of independent study and under two main administrators: AFAM Studies secretary Deborah Crowder and AFAM department head Julius Nyang’oro. Wainstein’s investigation became the first to include interviews with Crowder and Nyang’oro. “That this would have gone so far that an administrator (and not a faculty member) would be assigning a grade, it was such a shock,” Carol Folt, the university’s new chancellor, said in a conference call on Wednesday morning.
Neither is quoted extensively in the report, but the report queries extensively as to their motives. Atop even a Tar Heel fandom that sometimes caused Crowder to miss work on days after North Carolina basketball losses, according to the report, both Crowder and Nyang’oro seem to have operated out of a sense of “compassion.” Crowder’s compassion stemmed from her time as an undergraduate at North Carolina in the early 1970s, when she thought the university catered excessively to only the “best and brightest,” while Nyang’oro’s compassion kept in mind two former student-athletes from the early 1990s who had left the school because of academic ineligibility, after which one became an inmate and the other a murder victim. A number of the students’ papers included brief introductions and closings with only “fluff” in between, according to the report.
Further, an ASPSA tutor shared such sympathies as stated in Wainstein’s report, crossing accepted lines to help out athletes she deemed incapable of completing the necessary schoolwork. “Hundreds” of the courses, the report reads, were independent-study. Yet when the university tightened standards on the amount of independent study a student could undertake, Crowder altered her program, creating courses she identified as lecture courses, but which mirrored independent study in that lectures never happened. The Wainstein report found 188 such courses between 1999 and 2011, in which 47.4 percent of the enrollments were student-athletes, who generally comprise 4 percent of the student population. Once Crowder retired in 2009, Nyang’oro sustained the practices for two more years until his retirement in 2011, albeit less voluminously.
Even as a non-faculty member, Crowder graded papers and graded them kindly, according to the report and others, largely because she had indifferent oversight from Nyang’oro. She also created courses. In all the “paper classes,” the report found an average issued grade of 3.62, set against 3.28 for the regular classes in the department. Among student-athletes, though, the report found an average issued grade of 3.55, further above the 2.84 among student-athletes in the regular department classes.
“That this would have gone so far that an administrator (and not a faculty member) would be assigning a grade, it was such a shock,” Carol Folt, the university’s new chancellor, said in a conference call on Wednesday morning, just before Wainstein’s findings would be presented publicly. “In football, for example, ASPSA Associate Director Cynthia Reynolds and her staff sent Crowder lists of players to be enrolled in ‘paper classes’ each term, and in some cases apparently even indicated for Crowder the grade or grade range the player would need to earn in the class to maintain eligibility,” the report stated.
In fact, in 1999 when independent-study standards tightened on campus, the shadow program morphed to include classes designated as “lectures” but which never met. Those, in turn, included five “bifurcated” classes wherein a portion of the students attended lectures but another portion did not. While exact numbers can be intractable given the way the students were listed, the report states that between 1999 and 2011, approximately 1,871 of 3,933 students (47.6 percent) who enrolled in these “courses” were student-athletes, with 1,189 (24.5 percent) of those from the football and men’s basketball programs. In the more nationally visible men’s basketball program, meanwhile, “Academic counselor Burgess McSwain and her successor Wayne Walden routinely called Crowder to arrange classes for their players.” The Raleigh News & Observer reported in June that five members of North Carolina’s 2005 national-championship team, including “at least four key players, accounted for a combined 39 enrollments in classes that have been identified as confirmed or suspected lecture classes that never met.”
While the easy courses were available to the general student population, a factor the NCAA cited as it discontinued an earlier investigation, Wainstein’s report did interview 126 subjects and comb 1.6 million emails and electronic documents to find some indications of cause-effect relationships. “In football, for example, ASPSA Associate Director Cynthia Reynolds and her staff sent Crowder lists of players to be enrolled in ‘paper classes’ each term, and in some cases apparently even indicated for Crowder the grade or grade range the player would need to earn in the class to maintain eligibility,” the report stated. Still, the Wainstein report, the third commissioned by the university in the three years since the scandal surfaced, does not establish knowledge of the extent of the “shadow curriculum” within the basketball program or athletic department. Former star Rashad McCants told ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” in June about a trail of “paper courses” that had not educated him. He alleged that head coach Roy Williams had offered to help him “swap” one course for another. Former Tar Heel basketball players and Williams had rebutted the claims.
In the more nationally visible men’s basketball, meanwhile, “Academic counselor Burgess McSwain and her successor Wayne Walden routinely called Crowder to arrange classes for their players.” Wainstein’s report, which interviewed both Williams and former basketball head coach Matt Doherty, does not place heavy implication on Williams. In fact, it paints Williams as concerned toward his academic assistants that, after his arrival in 2003, too many of his players seemed to major in African and Afro-American Studies, a signal that counselors might be steering them.
Rich in numbers, the report cites 188 different “lecture classes” and “hundreds of independent studies and ‘paper classes,’” involving more than 3,100 students. It states that 47.4 percent of enrollments in “lecture” paper classes were student-athletes, who comprise about 4 percent of the student population. While the average grade in a “paper class” was a 3.62 compared with 3.28 in regular AFAM classes, the average grade of student-athletes above the norm was 3.55-2.84, according to the report. The report criticizes the general failure of both university and athletic officials to probe more deeply even after a general reputation of laxness and specific suspicions. (One administrator noted around 2006 that Nyang’oro couldn’t possibly oversee 300 independent-study courses at one time.) The report also commends the university for its vigilance once the details surfaced in 2011. In March 2012, the NCAA found North Carolina guilty of multiple infractions but found it had not lost “institutional control,” a major factor in avoiding penalties. The university fired Davis on July 27, 2011, and athletic director Dick Baddour resigned the day after that. North Carolina vacated 16 football wins from 2008 and 2009, and the NCAA tacked on reductions of 15 scholarships, three years of probation and a 2012 post-season bowl ban.
This latest report will go to the NCAA for further review.
With 126 interviews conducted and 1.6 million emails and documents reviewed, Wainstein’s report furthers that of the former North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin, released two years ago. This is the first to include interviews with Crowder and Nyang’oro.
Neither is quoted extensively in the report, but the report queries extensively as to their motives. Atop even a Tar Heel fandom that sometimes caused Crowder to miss work on days after harsh basketball losses, both Crowder and Nyang’oro seem to have operated out of a sense of “compassion,” according to the report. Crowder’s compassion stemmed from her time as an undergraduate at North Carolina in the early 1970s, when she thought the university catered excessively to only the “best and brightest,” while Nyang’oro’s compassion kept in mind two former student-athletes from early in his tenure who had left the school because of academic ineligibility, after which one became an inmate and the other a murder victim.
Further, an ASPSA tutor told Wainstein’s report she shared such sympathies, crossing accepted lines to help out athletes she deemed incapable of completing necessary schoolwork.