With the latest shenanigans out of Chapel Hill coming to light as of late, SFN has been on top of things with articles on the “Carolina Way” becoming a joke, the chair of the UNC BOT, the flagship wants a refund and the original Rogueapalooza article.
Also of related interest to this article is the excellent work done in the Roy, 3 percent and Swahili entry.
The N&O has a PDF with a list of the 9 aberrant (no faculty member supervised or graded work) and the 45 irregular (faculty member had limited contact with students) courses in the African and Afro-American studies department. You can read the full explanations and definitions of aberrant and irregular in this document from UNC.
Aberrant Courses
In these 9 courses (and the term student-athlete is being used quite loosely):
8 of those courses had an enrollment of at least 50% student-athletes.
7 had an enrollment of at least 60% student-athletes.
6 had an enrollment of at least 70% student-athletes.
4 had an enrollment of at least 80% student-athletes.
2 had an enrollment of 100% student-athletes.
In the first summer school session of 2008, only one student was enrolled in the course SWAH402. That lone student was a UNC men’s basketball player.
In the second summer school session of 2007, all 6 of the students enrolled in the course SWAH403 were student-athletes, half of which were football players.
Other than the one course where the only student was a non student-athlete, there were no classes where the non student-athletes (the vast majority of students on campus) outnumbered the student-athletes.
Wikipedia lists the student population at UNC as 29,390 and the undergraduate population as 18,579. Going through the current rosters of all the sports at UNC there are approximately 700 student-athletes (some may be walkons or not on a full scholarship but let’s just assume if you’re on a team, you’re a student athlete).
For a quick and dirty analysis, that means student-athletes make up around 2.4% of the student body and 3.8% of the undergrads. The non-athlete to athlete ratio is 41 to 1 overall and 25.5 to 1 as undergrads.
In these nine courses the ratio goes in the opposite direction, there are 3.2 student athletes for every non-student athlete.
In these nine aberrant courses, there were a total 59 students enrolled. 45 of those students were athletes (76.3%). 32 were football players (54.2%). 7 were basketball players (11.9%).
The percentage of student-athletes in these nine courses (76.3%) is 32 times higher that the percentage of student-athletes in the overall student body (2.4%) and 20 times higher that the percentage for undergraduates (3.8%). For football players (54.2%) it is 23 times higher overall and 14 times higher for undergrads. For basketball players (11.9%) it is 5 times higher overall and 3 times higher for undergrads.
Irregular Courses
In these 45 courses:
32 of those courses had an enrollment of at least 50% student-athletes.
19 had an enrollment of at least 60% student-athletes.
14 had an enrollment of at least 70% student-athletes.
9 had an enrollment of at least 80% student-athletes.
3 had an enrollment of at least 90% student-athletes.
2 had an enrollment of 100% student-athletes.
The class mentioned above where the lone student was a UNC men’s basketball player was not a one time occurrence. In the second summer session of 2007, one student was enrolled in AFAM 269. Again, that one student was a UNC men’s basketball player.
In the first summer school session of 2008, all 5 of the students enrolled in the course AFAM 398 were student-athletes, 4 of which were football players and the other a men’s basketball player.
Then there is also the infamous AFAM280 course in the second summer session of 2011 with an enrollment of 18 football players and 1 former player. You can read more about this class in this article from the N&O.
Out of these 45 classes there were only 13 classes where the non student-athletes outnumbered the student-athletes. Only 6 of these 45 classes had no student-athletes enrolled.
As mentioned in the previous section, student-athletes make up around 2.4% of the student body and 3.8% of the undergrads. The non-athlete to athlete ratio is 41 to 1 overall and 25.5 to 1 as undergrads.
In these 45 irregular courses the ratio again goes in the opposite direction, there are 1.3 student athletes for every non-student athlete.
In these 45 irregular courses, there were a total 627 students enrolled. 353 of those students were athletes (56.3%). 214 were football players (34.1%). 16 were basketball players (2.6%).
The percentage of student-athletes in these 45 courses (56.3%) is 23 times higher that the percentage of student-athletes in the overall student body (2.4%) and 15 times higher that the percentage for undergraduates (3.8%). For football players (34.1%) it is 14 times higher overall and 9 times higher for undergrads. For basketball players (2.6%) it is slightly higher overall and actually lower for undergrads.
Conclusions
It’s completely obvious that the enrollment in these fraudulent courses is nowhere near representative of the student body overall or at the undergrad level.
Tom Ross, the UNC system president was quoted as saying “I believe that this was an isolated situation and that the campus has taken appropriate steps to correct problems and put additional safeguards in place.â€
How isolated is it to have such a high concentration of student-athletes in these suspect courses? Maybe if you define isolated as these courses were isolated for student-athletes to take.
And the “appropriate steps to correct problems” were obviously not taken when this was still going on in the summer of 2011.
At least Ross finally created a review panel from the BOG.
Even Dick Baddour agrees with me, from WRAL: “What I am concerned about is when last summer, you see that sort of concentration within a course, not a major, but a course, when our antenna should have been up.â€
Roy Williams chimed in as well saying “Am I worried about it? I’m worried about it from a university issue, but not from a basketball issue.†In a just world Roy would be really, really worried right about now.
UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp was quoted as saying ““We’ve done a very thorough investigation on the academic side.†I’m skeptical they’ve done anything as thorough as what I just did in a couple of hours work. And if they did, they still concluded everything is fine, move along, nothing to see here. Thorp seems more concerned about getting a refund from Nyang’oro than with the complete academic disaster right in front of his face.
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