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U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

81 points by rgovind 12y ago

csdrane 12y ago
Pretty shocking but I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  It's probably happening at a lot of other universities with big sports programs. UNC just happened to get caught.
  - RyJones 12y ago
    Say, Stanford? http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/
  - evanriley 12y ago
    Oh, its probably happening at most universities. I went to N.C. State and would be surprised if it WASN'T happening there too. I assume any school which gets a amount of money from their sports program would have something similar to UNC.
    - rrrx3 12y ago
      I also went to NC State, and I'm pretty sure that there's no department dedicated to this type of institutional corruption.
      - iends 12y ago
        When I was at NCSU a college soccer player was on the roster in my "Learn Proofs for Math Majors" (MA225) course. He and a tutored showed up intermittently to the class. After some measurable time after the drop date he stopped showing up. I've always wondered if they let him drop it really late after the drop date or something shady was going on. Probably a late drop since it was soccer and not Football/Basketball. =)
        rrrx3 12y ago
        This is the type of subjective stuff that happens to create an urban legend about "athletes getting an easy ride," though. You don't really know what happened, but the eventual conclusion that most would take is: 1. he got a passing grade in spite of irregular class attendance. This is highly unlikely, but always seems to be the first place people go because "athletes get treated differently." or 2. he got a late drop - which some consider "unfair," even in the light of late drops being available to any student for a whole host of reasons (For example, I dropped an entire semester due to depression, well after the drop date)
        iends 12y ago
        1. He stopped showing up for exams. Impossible to get a passing grade unless they made a lot of shady concessions. 2. Most likely, which is what I pointed out in my original comment.
    - javert 12y ago
      The amazing thing at UNC is that it was just a rogue low-level employee (who picked up a couple of minor co-conspirators on the way), NOT a coordinated effort from the top of the university down. I would imagine at many or most big sports schools, it is the latter. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter at UNC too. If so, UNC has done a world-class cover up so far by making it look like the former.
      - w1ntermute 12y ago
        Throwing a couple of minions under the bus when things look bad is a time-tested strategy.
      - belovedeagle 12y ago
        World-class? It may look that way from the outside to people unfamiliar with the university, but from the inside, this cover-up is ridiculously transparent. It's clear that most of the AFAM department knew what was going on, as well as the tutors and students.
        javert 12y ago
        I think you misunderstood my point. If it is "clear" that most of the AFAM department knew, the scandal has successfully been pinned on and contained to the AFAM department, and has not contaminated the highest levels of the university (i.e. Chancellor, Provost, athletics chairman, etc.).
  - JackFr 12y ago
    While I don't believe UNC is necessarilly the only offender, this is not a case of 'everyones doing it'. There is a spectrum of practices which scholarship athletes typically use. Some are simple, practical and pretty much above reproach -- taking the fewest credits allowable during the season; taking academically rigorous course over the summer. Some start to get questionable -- at what point does intensive tutoring become the tutor actually doing the work. And then are no show classes and fake grades. It's possible to be a scholarship athlete and get a real academic degree. I've seen people do it first hand. But it's hard -- you need to start with a decent academic background, and then work your ass off and most likely the social aspect of your college time will suffer. That being said, even without the best academic background its possible to legitimately graduate if there is institutional support for it. The student might not have the most rigorous undergraduate course work, but they will have earned a degree equivalent to many non-athletes at the school. But for this to happen there needs to be institutional support both inside and outside the athletic department. What's disturbing to me about UNC, is not just that they knowingly and persistently cheated, but that there behavior was purely and most basely exploitative -- they weren't even pretending to educate these students.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- IvyMike 12y ago
  If you go to a school that plays opposite UNC and your school follows the rules, I suspect you might care as it puts you at a competitive disadvantage.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - drewcrawford 12y ago
      Collegiate athletics is organized under a league called the NCAA. The NCAA sets rules requiring players to have certain ACT/SAT scores, GPAs, prohibit players accepting compensation for participation, etc., and there is a complicated enforcement division that metes out discipline for violations. Schools can technically do whatever they want, but in practice this would put them in violation of agreements with the NCAA, they'd get kicked out, and then they'd have nobody to play against.
    - IvyMike 12y ago
      I guess I mean the NCAA rules on academic eligibility. I'll admit that I don't have a detailed understanding but having completely nonexistent classes seems like it is likely a violation. I supposed we will have to wait for the reopened investigation to commence to find out. http://www.ncaa.org/remaining-eligible-academics http://www.ncaa.org/remaining-eligible-academics
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
cellis 12y ago
Sometimes I wonder why these requirements are there in the first place. Why not just be honest about it, pay the athletes and get on with the sports program. It's not like 80% of the degrees at most universities are worth anything anyways.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Why is every semi-pro athlete expected to get a decent GPA in order to play on a university's football team? It's a completely different skillset. I don't blame players for ditching classes to pursue their dreams. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's the same drive as an entrepreneur's: to test yourself, to excel. It's just a different context. They are adults. If, as adults, they choose not to pursue academic studies, and instead choose to focus all of their energy on sports, then they should be allowed to do that without putting their sports career at risk. I do blame everyone involved in the fakeness, though. Their decisions should stand on their own.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Sure; but they shouldn't be playing on a college team. As in, if you don't work at a company you shouldn't play on the company team.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Why not? (I ask this in hopes of being persuaded, not to defend a position.)
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Because colleges have the stated goal of educating people. Its cynical (as the commenter above mentioned at the end) to join the college with no intention of actually getting educated. Its called a 'shill' or ringer - somebody you get from outside to represent you, that is not actually a member of your organization beyond the single task (sports).
      - llamataboot 12y ago
        But this has nothing to do with how NCAA athletics have worked in the US, especially in football, for decades. You can't blame the players, when they are pursuing the sports path open to them, blame the colleges.
Alex3917 12y ago
I'd highly recommend the documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports. It shows many interviews with the students, coaches, and staff involved with this situation. (Also free w/ Amazon Prime.)
IvyMike 12y ago
MLB has the minor leagues as their feeder program. The NFL has college football as their feeder program. There are a lot of tradeoffs, but in the end I think the MLB's system is better. To me, the charade of "student athletes" in football gets more and more strained each year. The question is if they did want to transition to a minor league football system, how can you go from here to there in an orderly fashion?
- remarkEon 12y ago
  I honestly don't think it would be possible. College Football is something that is so culturally engrained in America that even tinkering with it a little bit (like adding a tiny 4 team playoff) is met with huge amounts of skepticism. The MLB's system is also different because, on average, it takes longer to develop the typical player post-college. Obviously there are player outliers, but baseball is much more technical than football - which sort of justifies the entire farm system in and of itself. The incubation period is just typically longer.
- cpwright 12y ago
  It seems like you could assign each existing NFL franchise the right to have a minor league franchise (maybe let them bid or have a lottery for the rights to specific cities); and then draft out of high-school and college rather than just out of college. The player's union would clearly have something to say about it, particularly if they can easily bring players up and down mid-season based on injuries or performance.
  - remarkEon 12y ago
    Maybe. But you'd have to convince the NFL that a minor league is something worth investing in. A longer pipeline of higher volume of play means that the risk of injury would be substantially higher. The NFL seems more interesting in making money that dealing with anything more complex than moving a team to London.
zaidf 12y ago
I graduated from UNC's Communication Studies program, one that many athletes sign up for. I took classes with many of the athletes, including half of our championship basketball team. I can honestly say I did not find any organized attempts on part of the professors to provide underhanded help to athletes. So if it happened, it was by administrators, away from the sight of the rest of students/instructors. Even then, I am a bit surprised. I remember athlete friends being super concerned about their attendance and passing. In almost every class, we'd get someone drop by while class was in session to check if the athletes in the class were in actually there.
nkozyra 12y ago
With regard to college athletes ... I think they should be on a college team. I think they should be going to college. I do not think they should be paid. Like most people, they are preparing for their future in the field of their interest. The issue, in my opinion, is that we attempt to shoehorn them into "traditional" curriculum. They're forced to choose a major, often funneled into the easiest thing just to get through. Fundamentally, the majority are in college to learn and prepare for life as a professional athlete (assuming we're talking about the "Big 3" sports). Let's allow them to do that. Let's provide programs that focus on that, that teach sport fundamentals, dealing with the media, managing money, dealing with agents, fundamentals of business, etc. Let's also provide routes for post-professional-sport life, like lower-level media classes, etc. We seem to have an aversion to treating a lucrative and very real profession like something that warrants education. Edit: The problem with $ and athletes largely applies solely to football, wherein the NCAA and NFL have colluded to force high school talent to play somewhere for three years after graduation. This is arbitrary and stupid, and forces kids into programs they don't care about, for institutions that they don't care about. This is the primary issue with not paying players. It's not that colleges don't pay, it's that there's no other opportunity to get paid.
- crassus2 12y ago
  Problem is, only 1.7% of college football players are ever going to play professional ball.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    I think the % is higher, even if we're talking about practice squads. As mentioned, the curriculum would also include tangentially related fields.
tzs 12y ago
The NCAA is basically a joke when it comes to enforcing their rules on academic standards. This was made clear a couple years ago, when they hit Caltech with big penalties for lax academic standards, while basically ignoring things like the UNC scandal. Caltech was fact was technically in violation, because it allows students to spend the first three weeks of each term taking classes without registering for them. The idea is that students can sample several classes they are interested in, then decide which they will stick with, and then register. For this three weeks, they are doing the work from all of the classes they are sampling. However, since they are not registered for a full academic load during that three weeks, they count as part-time students, not full-time students, and so are ineligible for NCAA sports. Caltech's new director of athletics noticed this, stopped the violations, and reported his department to the NCAA. The reaction of the press, both general and sports (Google "NCAA caltech" for details), was generally to make fun of the NCAA, and point out all the serious athletic schools routinely committing much worse, much more intentional violations. Of course, some of the major sanctions won't have any effect. For instance, Caltech was banned from postseason play for one year. Considering that most Caltech teams are in the midst of years or even decades long losing streaks in conference play, they aren't going near the postseason anyway. They also banned off-campus recruiting...which Caltech doesn't do. The only sanction that might have actually been noticeable was wiping out all wins of the ineligible teams. There was some initial concern that this would wipe out the basketball win over Occidental earlier that year that had snapped a 26 year, 310 conference game losing streak [1]. It turned out all the players on that team had been eligible, so the win stands. [1] A movie was made about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hoops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hoops
- qq66 12y ago
  "Lax academic standards" at Caltech... now I've seen everything.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >However, since they are not registered for a full academic load during that three weeks, they count as part-time students, not full-time students, and so are ineligible for NCAA sports. Caltech's new director of athletics noticed this, stopped the violations, and reported his department to the NCAA. That's bloody ridiculous. Add-drop period is practiced at almost all real universities.
Chevalier 12y ago
Honestly, doesn't this make anyone wonder what the point is of college in the first place? Even without the equivalent of special ed courses, it's not like most (any?) athletes study STEM courses that might require university certification. Literally the only point of their enrollment is to make money for the school, then shuffle off with a communications degree and work in a shoe store the rest of their lives. Yes, they can get drunk and get laid for a couple years, and if they're really good they might not have to borrow too much money for the privilege. But what a complete waste of time for everyone involved. They take pointless courses for worthless degrees so the student body can burn cars when balls are thrown correctly. Europeans have the right approach to education, even if they're still too credential-obsessed. Nobody cares about college sports, nobody goes into debt pursuing their degrees, and everyone can enter the work force much younger and start earning a few extra years of salary.
- eitally 12y ago
  I mostly disagree with your premise. This is a problem that only really afflicts two college sports: football & basketball, which are not coincidentally the only revenue sports at most schools. Most student-athletes take academics as seriously as their sport(s), and I think the fact that American colleges & universities offer top quality athletic programs as well as academic educations one of the best things about them. That said, football & basketball are completely out of hand, not to mention the playoff/BCS/NCAA Tournament system, TV/media rights, and the insanity of one-and-done feeder systems into the NBA (I'm looking at you, Kentucky!). Those athletes should be paid and they should potentially be employed by the colleges as athletes completely separately from any academic matriculation.
  - Chevalier 12y ago
    Well, I agree with you that the rowing/badminton/chess teams probably don't get special treatment. But you don't seem to question the value of "top quality athletic programs." Why do we want them to exist in the first place? The ostensible point of university is to develop a student's mind to solve problems -- preferably in the real world, though humanities programs insist that paying $50k+/year to read poetry is just as valuable an investment. Even if you take that assertion at face value, I'm not sure anyone, anywhere pretends that playing basketball prepares the student-athlete for anything at all. Almost none of them have a chance at a professional sports contract. Most will graduate with useless majors, having squandered their youth and their health on pointless competitions to throw a ball in a hoop. It's STUPID. Everyone involved is wasting their time. I'm all for athletics in colleges. I played intramural sports and enjoyed it, because nobody pretended that it mattered. But I really don't see a compelling case for the subsidy of organized college sports... which, like someone pointed out, is really just a a subsidy for professional organizations. And it's not just the pointless waste of time and money in college sports. The argument for college as an institution is getting weaker and weaker as free online alternatives get better and better. Aside from getting drunk and cheering against UMichigan, what compelling features does Ohio State University offer versus Harvard's courses on edX?
ericboggs 12y ago
UNC grad here. These "paper" classes were very well known when I was an undergrad. Your university almost certainly had similar classes that were very easy and required very little attendance...and were always full of athletes and lazy seniors looking to pump up their GPA. You can't fault the students (athletes or otherwise) for finding a shortcut in the system and then exploiting it. It is the university's responsibility to quality control its curriculum.
- eitally 12y ago
  Agree 100%. And -- even if they took "real" classes, all the high profile athletes have private tutors, too, who may well do a large portion of their work for them.
redraga 12y ago
European football (soccer) teams run academies of their own to groom players. If a youngster is serious about becoming a professional footballer, he/she joins these academies. They are given a "well-rounded" education, but the emphasis is obviously on the sport. Graduates end being signed by the parent club, or getting contracts with lower-level teams if they can make the cut. I'm curious to understand why this system isn't practiced in the US.
- iends 12y ago
  I wasn't a particularly great soccer player in middle school and highschool (some players on the club team ended up playing D3 soccer at small colleges), but the academies really didn't exist in America 20 years ago when I started playing as a kid. Things are much different now many of the clubs in MLS, NASL, and USL have their own academies where the players are coached by professional coaches or pro players at starting very young ages. One local example is: http://www.capitalarearailhawks.com/ http://www.capitalarearailhawks.com/ The model is much different, though. Generally the goal with most of these academies is to make a college team.

81 points by rgovind 12y ago

csdrane 12y ago

Pretty shocking but I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg.

w1ntermute 12y ago
It's probably happening at a lot of other universities with big sports programs. UNC just happened to get caught.
- RyJones 12y ago
  Say, Stanford? http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/
- evanriley 12y ago
  Oh, its probably happening at most universities. I went to N.C. State and would be surprised if it WASN'T happening there too. I assume any school which gets a amount of money from their sports program would have something similar to UNC.
  - rrrx3 12y ago
    I also went to NC State, and I'm pretty sure that there's no department dedicated to this type of institutional corruption.
    - iends 12y ago
      When I was at NCSU a college soccer player was on the roster in my "Learn Proofs for Math Majors" (MA225) course. He and a tutored showed up intermittently to the class. After some measurable time after the drop date he stopped showing up. I've always wondered if they let him drop it really late after the drop date or something shady was going on. Probably a late drop since it was soccer and not Football/Basketball. =)
      - rrrx3 12y ago
        This is the type of subjective stuff that happens to create an urban legend about "athletes getting an easy ride," though. You don't really know what happened, but the eventual conclusion that most would take is: 1. he got a passing grade in spite of irregular class attendance. This is highly unlikely, but always seems to be the first place people go because "athletes get treated differently." or 2. he got a late drop - which some consider "unfair," even in the light of late drops being available to any student for a whole host of reasons (For example, I dropped an entire semester due to depression, well after the drop date)
        iends 12y ago
        1. He stopped showing up for exams. Impossible to get a passing grade unless they made a lot of shady concessions. 2. Most likely, which is what I pointed out in my original comment.
  - javert 12y ago
    The amazing thing at UNC is that it was just a rogue low-level employee (who picked up a couple of minor co-conspirators on the way), NOT a coordinated effort from the top of the university down. I would imagine at many or most big sports schools, it is the latter. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter at UNC too. If so, UNC has done a world-class cover up so far by making it look like the former.
    - w1ntermute 12y ago
      Throwing a couple of minions under the bus when things look bad is a time-tested strategy.
    - belovedeagle 12y ago
      World-class? It may look that way from the outside to people unfamiliar with the university, but from the inside, this cover-up is ridiculously transparent. It's clear that most of the AFAM department knew what was going on, as well as the tutors and students.
      - javert 12y ago
        I think you misunderstood my point. If it is "clear" that most of the AFAM department knew, the scandal has successfully been pinned on and contained to the AFAM department, and has not contaminated the highest levels of the university (i.e. Chancellor, Provost, athletics chairman, etc.).
- JackFr 12y ago
  While I don't believe UNC is necessarilly the only offender, this is not a case of 'everyones doing it'. There is a spectrum of practices which scholarship athletes typically use. Some are simple, practical and pretty much above reproach -- taking the fewest credits allowable during the season; taking academically rigorous course over the summer. Some start to get questionable -- at what point does intensive tutoring become the tutor actually doing the work. And then are no show classes and fake grades. It's possible to be a scholarship athlete and get a real academic degree. I've seen people do it first hand. But it's hard -- you need to start with a decent academic background, and then work your ass off and most likely the social aspect of your college time will suffer. That being said, even without the best academic background its possible to legitimately graduate if there is institutional support for it. The student might not have the most rigorous undergraduate course work, but they will have earned a degree equivalent to many non-athletes at the school. But for this to happen there needs to be institutional support both inside and outside the athletic department. What's disturbing to me about UNC, is not just that they knowingly and persistently cheated, but that there behavior was purely and most basely exploitative -- they weren't even pretending to educate these students.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

IvyMike 12y ago
If you go to a school that plays opposite UNC and your school follows the rules, I suspect you might care as it puts you at a competitive disadvantage.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - drewcrawford 12y ago
    Collegiate athletics is organized under a league called the NCAA. The NCAA sets rules requiring players to have certain ACT/SAT scores, GPAs, prohibit players accepting compensation for participation, etc., and there is a complicated enforcement division that metes out discipline for violations. Schools can technically do whatever they want, but in practice this would put them in violation of agreements with the NCAA, they'd get kicked out, and then they'd have nobody to play against.
  - IvyMike 12y ago
    I guess I mean the NCAA rules on academic eligibility. I'll admit that I don't have a detailed understanding but having completely nonexistent classes seems like it is likely a violation. I supposed we will have to wait for the reopened investigation to commence to find out. http://www.ncaa.org/remaining-eligible-academics http://www.ncaa.org/remaining-eligible-academics
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

cellis 12y ago

Sometimes I wonder why these requirements are there in the first place. Why not just be honest about it, pay the athletes and get on with the sports program. It's not like 80% of the degrees at most universities are worth anything anyways.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Why is every semi-pro athlete expected to get a decent GPA in order to play on a university's football team? It's a completely different skillset. I don't blame players for ditching classes to pursue their dreams. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's the same drive as an entrepreneur's: to test yourself, to excel. It's just a different context. They are adults. If, as adults, they choose not to pursue academic studies, and instead choose to focus all of their energy on sports, then they should be allowed to do that without putting their sports career at risk. I do blame everyone involved in the fakeness, though. Their decisions should stand on their own.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Sure; but they shouldn't be playing on a college team. As in, if you don't work at a company you shouldn't play on the company team.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Why not? (I ask this in hopes of being persuaded, not to defend a position.)
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Because colleges have the stated goal of educating people. Its cynical (as the commenter above mentioned at the end) to join the college with no intention of actually getting educated. Its called a 'shill' or ringer - somebody you get from outside to represent you, that is not actually a member of your organization beyond the single task (sports).
    - llamataboot 12y ago
      But this has nothing to do with how NCAA athletics have worked in the US, especially in football, for decades. You can't blame the players, when they are pursuing the sports path open to them, blame the colleges.

Alex3917 12y ago

I'd highly recommend the documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports. It shows many interviews with the students, coaches, and staff involved with this situation. (Also free w/ Amazon Prime.)

IvyMike 12y ago

MLB has the minor leagues as their feeder program. The NFL has college football as their feeder program. There are a lot of tradeoffs, but in the end I think the MLB's system is better. To me, the charade of "student athletes" in football gets more and more strained each year. The question is if they did want to transition to a minor league football system, how can you go from here to there in an orderly fashion?

remarkEon 12y ago
I honestly don't think it would be possible. College Football is something that is so culturally engrained in America that even tinkering with it a little bit (like adding a tiny 4 team playoff) is met with huge amounts of skepticism. The MLB's system is also different because, on average, it takes longer to develop the typical player post-college. Obviously there are player outliers, but baseball is much more technical than football - which sort of justifies the entire farm system in and of itself. The incubation period is just typically longer.
cpwright 12y ago
It seems like you could assign each existing NFL franchise the right to have a minor league franchise (maybe let them bid or have a lottery for the rights to specific cities); and then draft out of high-school and college rather than just out of college. The player's union would clearly have something to say about it, particularly if they can easily bring players up and down mid-season based on injuries or performance.
- remarkEon 12y ago
  Maybe. But you'd have to convince the NFL that a minor league is something worth investing in. A longer pipeline of higher volume of play means that the risk of injury would be substantially higher. The NFL seems more interesting in making money that dealing with anything more complex than moving a team to London.

zaidf 12y ago

I graduated from UNC's Communication Studies program, one that many athletes sign up for. I took classes with many of the athletes, including half of our championship basketball team. I can honestly say I did not find any organized attempts on part of the professors to provide underhanded help to athletes. So if it happened, it was by administrators, away from the sight of the rest of students/instructors. Even then, I am a bit surprised. I remember athlete friends being super concerned about their attendance and passing. In almost every class, we'd get someone drop by while class was in session to check if the athletes in the class were in actually there.

nkozyra 12y ago

With regard to college athletes ... I think they should be on a college team. I think they should be going to college. I do not think they should be paid. Like most people, they are preparing for their future in the field of their interest. The issue, in my opinion, is that we attempt to shoehorn them into "traditional" curriculum. They're forced to choose a major, often funneled into the easiest thing just to get through. Fundamentally, the majority are in college to learn and prepare for life as a professional athlete (assuming we're talking about the "Big 3" sports). Let's allow them to do that. Let's provide programs that focus on that, that teach sport fundamentals, dealing with the media, managing money, dealing with agents, fundamentals of business, etc. Let's also provide routes for post-professional-sport life, like lower-level media classes, etc. We seem to have an aversion to treating a lucrative and very real profession like something that warrants education. Edit: The problem with $ and athletes largely applies solely to football, wherein the NCAA and NFL have colluded to force high school talent to play somewhere for three years after graduation. This is arbitrary and stupid, and forces kids into programs they don't care about, for institutions that they don't care about. This is the primary issue with not paying players. It's not that colleges don't pay, it's that there's no other opportunity to get paid.

crassus2 12y ago
Problem is, only 1.7% of college football players are ever going to play professional ball.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  I think the % is higher, even if we're talking about practice squads. As mentioned, the curriculum would also include tangentially related fields.

tzs 12y ago

The NCAA is basically a joke when it comes to enforcing their rules on academic standards. This was made clear a couple years ago, when they hit Caltech with big penalties for lax academic standards, while basically ignoring things like the UNC scandal. Caltech was fact was technically in violation, because it allows students to spend the first three weeks of each term taking classes without registering for them. The idea is that students can sample several classes they are interested in, then decide which they will stick with, and then register. For this three weeks, they are doing the work from all of the classes they are sampling. However, since they are not registered for a full academic load during that three weeks, they count as part-time students, not full-time students, and so are ineligible for NCAA sports. Caltech's new director of athletics noticed this, stopped the violations, and reported his department to the NCAA. The reaction of the press, both general and sports (Google "NCAA caltech" for details), was generally to make fun of the NCAA, and point out all the serious athletic schools routinely committing much worse, much more intentional violations. Of course, some of the major sanctions won't have any effect. For instance, Caltech was banned from postseason play for one year. Considering that most Caltech teams are in the midst of years or even decades long losing streaks in conference play, they aren't going near the postseason anyway. They also banned off-campus recruiting...which Caltech doesn't do. The only sanction that might have actually been noticeable was wiping out all wins of the ineligible teams. There was some initial concern that this would wipe out the basketball win over Occidental earlier that year that had snapped a 26 year, 310 conference game losing streak [1]. It turned out all the players on that team had been eligible, so the win stands. [1] A movie was made about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hoops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hoops

qq66 12y ago
"Lax academic standards" at Caltech... now I've seen everything.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>However, since they are not registered for a full academic load during that three weeks, they count as part-time students, not full-time students, and so are ineligible for NCAA sports. Caltech's new director of athletics noticed this, stopped the violations, and reported his department to the NCAA. That's bloody ridiculous. Add-drop period is practiced at almost all real universities.

Chevalier 12y ago

Honestly, doesn't this make anyone wonder what the point is of college in the first place? Even without the equivalent of special ed courses, it's not like most (any?) athletes study STEM courses that might require university certification. Literally the only point of their enrollment is to make money for the school, then shuffle off with a communications degree and work in a shoe store the rest of their lives. Yes, they can get drunk and get laid for a couple years, and if they're really good they might not have to borrow too much money for the privilege. But what a complete waste of time for everyone involved. They take pointless courses for worthless degrees so the student body can burn cars when balls are thrown correctly. Europeans have the right approach to education, even if they're still too credential-obsessed. Nobody cares about college sports, nobody goes into debt pursuing their degrees, and everyone can enter the work force much younger and start earning a few extra years of salary.

eitally 12y ago
I mostly disagree with your premise. This is a problem that only really afflicts two college sports: football & basketball, which are not coincidentally the only revenue sports at most schools. Most student-athletes take academics as seriously as their sport(s), and I think the fact that American colleges & universities offer top quality athletic programs as well as academic educations one of the best things about them. That said, football & basketball are completely out of hand, not to mention the playoff/BCS/NCAA Tournament system, TV/media rights, and the insanity of one-and-done feeder systems into the NBA (I'm looking at you, Kentucky!). Those athletes should be paid and they should potentially be employed by the colleges as athletes completely separately from any academic matriculation.
- Chevalier 12y ago
  Well, I agree with you that the rowing/badminton/chess teams probably don't get special treatment. But you don't seem to question the value of "top quality athletic programs." Why do we want them to exist in the first place? The ostensible point of university is to develop a student's mind to solve problems -- preferably in the real world, though humanities programs insist that paying $50k+/year to read poetry is just as valuable an investment. Even if you take that assertion at face value, I'm not sure anyone, anywhere pretends that playing basketball prepares the student-athlete for anything at all. Almost none of them have a chance at a professional sports contract. Most will graduate with useless majors, having squandered their youth and their health on pointless competitions to throw a ball in a hoop. It's STUPID. Everyone involved is wasting their time. I'm all for athletics in colleges. I played intramural sports and enjoyed it, because nobody pretended that it mattered. But I really don't see a compelling case for the subsidy of organized college sports... which, like someone pointed out, is really just a a subsidy for professional organizations. And it's not just the pointless waste of time and money in college sports. The argument for college as an institution is getting weaker and weaker as free online alternatives get better and better. Aside from getting drunk and cheering against UMichigan, what compelling features does Ohio State University offer versus Harvard's courses on edX?

ericboggs 12y ago

UNC grad here. These "paper" classes were very well known when I was an undergrad. Your university almost certainly had similar classes that were very easy and required very little attendance...and were always full of athletes and lazy seniors looking to pump up their GPA. You can't fault the students (athletes or otherwise) for finding a shortcut in the system and then exploiting it. It is the university's responsibility to quality control its curriculum.

eitally 12y ago
Agree 100%. And -- even if they took "real" classes, all the high profile athletes have private tutors, too, who may well do a large portion of their work for them.

redraga 12y ago

European football (soccer) teams run academies of their own to groom players. If a youngster is serious about becoming a professional footballer, he/she joins these academies. They are given a "well-rounded" education, but the emphasis is obviously on the sport. Graduates end being signed by the parent club, or getting contracts with lower-level teams if they can make the cut. I'm curious to understand why this system isn't practiced in the US.

iends 12y ago
I wasn't a particularly great soccer player in middle school and highschool (some players on the club team ended up playing D3 soccer at small colleges), but the academies really didn't exist in America 20 years ago when I started playing as a kid. Things are much different now many of the clubs in MLS, NASL, and USL have their own academies where the players are coached by professional coaches or pro players at starting very young ages. One local example is: http://www.capitalarearailhawks.com/ http://www.capitalarearailhawks.com/ The model is much different, though. Generally the goal with most of these academies is to make a college team.