UNC investigation reveals more than 3,100 students involved in academic fraud

A University of North Carolina academic probe revealed that more than 3,100 students were connected to academic fraud from 1993-2011.

In a press conference held on Wednesday, UNC released the findings of a eight-month investigation into academic irregularities by Kenneth Wainstein, a former top U.S. Justice Department official.

A majority of the students in the irregular classes were UNC athletes, accounting for 47 percent of enrollment.

UNC clarified that no current coaches were involved or aware of the hundreds of irregular classes. 

Dan Kane and Jane Stancill of The News Observer summarized the system Wainstein's report uncovered: 

Academic counselors had pushed for the easy classes and embraced those started by Deborah Crowder, a longtime manager for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. The report describes a fairly broad group of academic and athletic officials who knew about athletes getting better grades in classes that only required papers, yet taking little or no action. ...

Between 1993 and 2011, Crowder and Nyang’oro developed and ran a ‘shadow curriculum’ within the AFAM Department that provided students with academically flawed instruction through the offering of ‘paper classes.' ... These were classes that involved no interaction with a faculty member, required no class attendance or course work other than single paper, and resulted in consistently high grades that Crowder awarded without reading the papers or otherwise evaluating their true quality. ...

It was common knowledge within the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes that the classes didn’t meet, were easy and offered high grades. They became such a crutch that when Crowder retired in 2009, football team counselors were desperate for the classes to continue, warning coaches the team’s overall GPA would plummet, which it did. ...

Chancellor Carol Folt said some 70 reforms already enacted address practically every issue the report turned up. But the university won’t stop there, she said.