Gopher07
Captain of Awesome
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Being discussed on the football board as well. This is much, much worse than what happened with Clem (IMO). Wonder if the punishment will match the crime?
Here's the report: http://advancingrefor.staging.wpengi...NAL-REPORT.pdf
There's a ton in there. But some highlights:
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 a single paper, and resulted in consistently high grades that Crowder awarded without reading the papers or otherwise evaluating their true quality.
A good number of these student-athletes were “steered” to the AFAM paper classes by certain academic counselors in ASPSA. This steering was most prevalent among the counselors for the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball. While some of these counselors knew only that these were easy classes, others were fully aware that there was no faculty involvement and that Crowder was managing the whole course and grading the papers. Those counselors saw these paper classes as “GPA boosters” and steered players into them largely in order to help them maintain their GPAs and their eligibility under the NCAA and Chapel Hill eligibility rules. At least two of those counselors went so far as to suggest what grades Crowder should award to their players who were taking her paper classes.
ASPSA made tutors available to all student-athletes, and those tutors often helped the student-athletes with their paper-class papers. While most conducted themselves appropriately, several of the tutors crossed the line between permissible and impermissible assistance and drafted parts of the papers that the student-athletes submitted for credit in these classes.
Like many universities, the Chapel Hill administration took a loose, decentralized approach to management of its departments and department chairpersons, on the theory that strong management in the college environment unduly constrains the academic independence that fosters creative instruction and research. As a result of this approach, the University failed to conduct any meaningful oversight of the AFAM Department and ASPSA, and Crowder’s paper class scheme was allowed to operate within one of the nation’s premier academic institutions for almost two decades.
We found no evidence that the higher levels of the University tried in any way to obscure the facts or the magnitude of this situation. To the extent there were times of delay or equivocation in their response to this controversy, we largely attribute that to insufficient appreciation of the scale of the problem, an understandable lack of experience with this sort of institutional crisis and some lingering disbelief that such misconduct could have occurred at Chapel Hill.
My personal favorite:
A total of 2,152 individual students who enrolled in the paper classes were included in this impact analysis. Of that number, 329 students (including 169 student-athletes) had at least one semester in which the grade they received in their paper class either pushed or kept their GPA above 2.0. In other words, for at least one semester in their college career, each of those students had an actual cumulative GPA above a 2.0 but a recalculated GPA (excluding the paper class grade(s)) below a 2.0. This number includes 123 football players, 15 men’s basketball players, eight women’s basketball players, and 26 Olympic sport athletes. Of that number, we identified 81 students who earned degrees from Chapel Hill whose recalculated final GPA excluding the grade(s) from their paper class or classes was less than the 2.0 required to graduate.
Here's the report: http://advancingrefor.staging.wpengi...NAL-REPORT.pdf
There's a ton in there. But some highlights:
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 a single paper, and resulted in consistently high grades that Crowder awarded without reading the papers or otherwise evaluating their true quality.
A good number of these student-athletes were “steered” to the AFAM paper classes by certain academic counselors in ASPSA. This steering was most prevalent among the counselors for the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball. While some of these counselors knew only that these were easy classes, others were fully aware that there was no faculty involvement and that Crowder was managing the whole course and grading the papers. Those counselors saw these paper classes as “GPA boosters” and steered players into them largely in order to help them maintain their GPAs and their eligibility under the NCAA and Chapel Hill eligibility rules. At least two of those counselors went so far as to suggest what grades Crowder should award to their players who were taking her paper classes.
ASPSA made tutors available to all student-athletes, and those tutors often helped the student-athletes with their paper-class papers. While most conducted themselves appropriately, several of the tutors crossed the line between permissible and impermissible assistance and drafted parts of the papers that the student-athletes submitted for credit in these classes.
Like many universities, the Chapel Hill administration took a loose, decentralized approach to management of its departments and department chairpersons, on the theory that strong management in the college environment unduly constrains the academic independence that fosters creative instruction and research. As a result of this approach, the University failed to conduct any meaningful oversight of the AFAM Department and ASPSA, and Crowder’s paper class scheme was allowed to operate within one of the nation’s premier academic institutions for almost two decades.
We found no evidence that the higher levels of the University tried in any way to obscure the facts or the magnitude of this situation. To the extent there were times of delay or equivocation in their response to this controversy, we largely attribute that to insufficient appreciation of the scale of the problem, an understandable lack of experience with this sort of institutional crisis and some lingering disbelief that such misconduct could have occurred at Chapel Hill.
My personal favorite:
A total of 2,152 individual students who enrolled in the paper classes were included in this impact analysis. Of that number, 329 students (including 169 student-athletes) had at least one semester in which the grade they received in their paper class either pushed or kept their GPA above 2.0. In other words, for at least one semester in their college career, each of those students had an actual cumulative GPA above a 2.0 but a recalculated GPA (excluding the paper class grade(s)) below a 2.0. This number includes 123 football players, 15 men’s basketball players, eight women’s basketball players, and 26 Olympic sport athletes. Of that number, we identified 81 students who earned degrees from Chapel Hill whose recalculated final GPA excluding the grade(s) from their paper class or classes was less than the 2.0 required to graduate.
