CHAPEL HILL N.C. – A two-year scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that has led to sidelined football players, NCAA penalties and the departure of a big-name coach has slowly built into questions of how widely academic fraud has spread at the elite public university.
After a series of campus reports into what went wrong, the oversight board for the 17-campus state university system is examining whether athletes were guided into no-show classes and lightly supervised independent studies. State criminal investigators are looking into signs of possible forgery, conspiracy, fraud, and whether a professor was paid for summer courses he didn’t fully teach. A former governor is looking for signs corners were cut beyond the one academic department identified so far.
Harvard University is coping with its own cheating scandal, and universities nationwide for decades boosted sports with academic compromises. But UNC-Chapel Hill will continue to thrive despite the current black eye, said Jay Smith, a history professor and member of an informal group of faculty members critical of the role of athletics on campus.
“Our academic programs are as strong today as they were in 2010, but our reputation for truth-telling has taken a real hit. I think the administration needs to dedicate itself to restoring that reputation,” Smith said.
The story began with the NCAA investigating players under since-fired football coach Butch Davis having contact with agents and receiving jewelry and other gifts. The NCAA in March imposed a one-year ban from postseason play, 15 forfeited scholarships and other penalties on the football team. But the probe also found academic fraud including a tutor who worked on football players’ term papers.
The saga’s next development could come Thursday, when former Tar Heels player Michael McAdoo’s lawsuit against the school, Chancellor Holden Thorp and the NCAA is heard in the state Court of Appeals. McAdoo is seeking damages after being ruled ineligible to play football for academic misconduct. The tutor helped McAdoo assemble a class essay, parts of which were showed to be plagiarized after his school work was submitted with the lawsuit. McAdoo is recovering from what may be his second season-ending injury since joining the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens two years ago.
McAdoo’s work in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies was among the pointers that led to an internal probe of the department. It found that more than 50 courses in African studies going back five years—about 9 percent of all courses in that time—featured instructors who didn’t teach, grades that were changed, and faculty signatures faked on grade rolls.
