Good morning! The News and Observer has played Santa yet again. Wait until you get a load of some of the bombshells in Kane’s latest front-page above-the-fold article that hit this morning.
The entire thing is a must-read. Here are some explosive passages:
Students looking to enroll in a summer class at UNC-Chapel Hill taught by Julius Nyang’oro were likely to hit a roadblock as soon as they went online.
Of the 38 courses the university says he was responsible for over five summers, 26 of them listed a maximum capacity for just one student. For many students, that would be a sign to go look for another course.
But university records show more than one student enrolled in most of these courses. And often, a substantial share of those students were athletes.
There’s another wrinkle to all this. Nyang’oro, the former chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies department where all these courses were listed, did not get paid for 29 of these suspect summer classes. Typically, professors are paid per class because the work is considered beyond their normal nine-month work year.
Willis Brooks and Jay Smith, two UNC-CH history professors who are concerned about the case’s impact on the university’s academic integrity, said the enrollment and pay data suggest Nyang’oro had set up a system for athletes to get into classes they could pass.
“The only logic I can conjure is (Nyang’oro) was protecting seats,†said Brooks, a professor emeritus who served on the faculty athletic committee in the early 1990s. “And since the preponderance of people who took the seats are athletes, there is circumstantial evidence,†he said.
Current and former UNC-CH officials say they can’t recall a worse case of academic fraud at the university….. The investigation started with a suspicious transcript belonging to a former UNC football player. Top leaders at UNC-CH and the UNC system, however, say athletics weren’t at the heart of the academic fraud, because nonathletes were in the suspect classes, too.
But athletes and former athletes made up a majority of those enrolled in the suspect classes. The university says that athletes and former athletes made up 64 percent of the enrollments.
UNC records show that in addition to the courses he taught, Nyang’oro supervised independent studies without pay for another 60 students during those summer semesters; at least 22 were football players. The independent studies are also academically suspect, according to an internal review UNC-CH officials released last month.
The summer courses are among 75 linked to Nyang’oro over a four-year period. University officials said that is an extraordinary number for a professor, let alone a department chairman, to have responsibility for, but no one noticed until the fraud investigation began.
There is major new info in this article, including info that is new to this board:– Nyang’oro “taught” many of the classes for free (at least officially)– The 64% athlete/former athlete figure is new. 24 hours ago, what we knew was (iirc) 54% athlete, unknown % former athlete– Strong circumstantial evidence exists that the same stuff was happening as long ago as 2001, based on class records
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