The NCAA and Academic Cheating

by wrv Fri Oct 24, 2014 7:44 am

While the focus in college athletics is now on the new wave of money to former amateur student athletes, there comes an old school scandal. No doubt you have seen the stories about academic fraud for approximately the last twenty years at the University of North Carolina. What possible penalty could follow a revelation like that? Our fellow league member San Francisco spent many years on the sidelines for a recruiting scandal, though the specifics of it I have not bothered to look up. The point is that if you have twenty years of academic fraud discovered only recently, doesn’t the NCAA have to consider the death penalty? Is UNC too big to fail? Is North Caroline going to at least forfeit some of its wins? Championships? Is the NCAA now so weak and the power conferences so strong that North Carolina will not suffer a significant penalty? I doubt many of the North Carolina women’s soccer national championships were aided by the academic fraud, but who knows? Will there be an objective and impartial justice administered or is the system too rigged?

Perhaps there exists a naivete in many of us by which we continue to believe that universities are there for academic reasons and that even student athletes are there primarily for an education. The money to be given now to athletes is only one indication that the power conferences at least know that the money making ability of revenue sports direct the university and not visa versa. The academic cheating scandal at North Carolina is more confirmation.

by Geezaldinho Fri Oct 24, 2014 9:41 am

The ncaa will decide academic cheating is none of its buisness. Dean Smith and Anson Dorrance will not forfeit any championships.

by Guest Fri Oct 24, 2014 10:21 am

wrv wrote:Is UNC too big to fail?

Yes.

And anyone that thinks this is just an isolated problem only at UNC is delusional.

by pilotram Fri Oct 24, 2014 12:51 pm

Covering up child rape didn't result in the death penalty. Clearly academic fraud won't either.

by PurplePrideTrumpet Fri Oct 24, 2014 2:02 pm

pilotram wrote:Covering up child rape didn't result in the death penalty. Clearly academic fraud won't either.

Along those lines, whatever punishment the NCAA hands out, they'll take back in a couple years if they decide UNC is really really sorry and promises to be good.

by VillaGorilla Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:25 pm

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:
pilotram wrote:Covering up child rape didn't result in the death penalty. Clearly academic fraud won't either.
Along those lines, whatever punishment the NCAA hands out, they'll take back in a couple years if they decide UNC is really really sorry and promises to be good.

Unless you're USC . . .

I think I might take issue with the use of the word "fraud" in regards to what occurred at UNC, although for mostly semantic reasons. The student-athletes did the work they were assigned and to my knowledge it was not alleged that they cheated/copied/otherwise behaved unethically in regards to their academic work. Students, whether athletes or not, at every college and university, yes even UP, tend to take the easiest classes offered. What is egregious in UNC's case is that the student-athletes were asked to do so little for a class they were funneled into specifically to raise their GPA to maintain eligibility. This happens at many if not all colleges, though probably not to the degree that has been revealed at UNC. Perhaps most distressing is the fact that the UNC trouble originated from the academic side of the institution, i.e. outside the athletic department. Everyone's previous comments are salient in exploring how much integrity is lost when a university begins to stray from the academic ideal.

So how about that wheel logo?

by Geezaldinho Fri Oct 24, 2014 4:04 pm

VillaGorilla wrote:
. The student-athletes did the work they were assigned and to my knowledge it was not alleged that they cheated/copied/otherwise behaved unethically in regards to their academic work.

Please. After discussing the cases of blatant plagiarizism that were ignored, the report has this, by way of explaining how students got around plagerism detecting software.

there are a number of papers in which, rather than plagiarize, students overused quoted material to such a degree that anyone reading the paper for the purposes of a serious academic evaluation would have been unable to ignore it. For example, in one paper that was ostensibly about the life and work of Nikki Giovanni as it related to larger dynamics in African-American culture, the student had simply written a two-page introduction and a last page of text, and the entire rest of the paper in-between those pages is almost nothing other than transcriptions of poems and other texts by Giovanni, formatted to take up maximal space. In a way, such papers are even more telling than the plagiarized papers, because, while plagiarism is not always easy to detect, students who used large amounts of “filler” quotes did nothing whatsoever to hide the fact that they were turning in mostly unoriginal work. The quote marks and citations are there, making it clear to the reader that most of the paper was not written by the student.113

This was reviewed by a person described as a department secretary and given a "A" grade.

Which part seems like ethical academic work?

by Guest Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:06 am

pilotram wrote:Covering up child rape didn't result in the death penalty. Clearly academic fraud won't either.

Apples and oranges. Child rape should be dealt with by the civil authorities. I don't even see what the NCAA had to do with that. Academic issues are exactly what the NCAA should be looking at.

Which sports at UNC would get the death penalty? The entire program? Any sport that had one athlete in the 20 years in question take one of those classes?

by wrv Sat Oct 25, 2014 8:55 am

I have now twice seen written that over 3,100 students were involved and one allegation that suggests the number is grossly underreported. UNC’s football and men’s basketball teams were involved; with that many students, I suspect other sports were involved. Until we know more details, it is hard to answer the question of which sports should be penalized, though their football and basketball teams are almost certainly candidates.

I just read that UNC spent $500,000 on a pr campaign to attempt to limit the damage when the story first broke a few years ago.

I sure agree this is “exactly what the NCAA should be looking at."

by VillaGorilla Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:00 pm

Geezaldinho wrote:
VillaGorilla wrote:
. The student-athletes did the work they were assigned and to my knowledge it was not alleged that they cheated/copied/otherwise behaved unethically in regards to their academic work.

Please. After discussing the cases of blatant plagiarizism that were ignored, the report has this, by way of explaining how students got around plagerism detecting software.

there are a number of papers in which, rather than plagiarize, students overused quoted material to such a degree that anyone reading the paper for the purposes of a serious academic evaluation would have been unable to ignore it. For example, in one paper that was ostensibly about the life and work of Nikki Giovanni as it related to larger dynamics in African-American culture, the student had simply written a two-page introduction and a last page of text, and the entire rest of the paper in-between those pages is almost nothing other than transcriptions of poems and other texts by Giovanni, formatted to take up maximal space. In a way, such papers are even more telling than the plagiarized papers, because, while plagiarism is not always easy to detect, students who used large amounts of “filler” quotes did nothing whatsoever to hide the fact that they were turning in mostly unoriginal work. The quote marks and citations are there, making it clear to the reader that most of the paper was not written by the student.113

This was reviewed by a person described as a department secretary and given a "A" grade.

Which part seems like ethical academic work?

Just what I get for writing a post trying to go off of the previous day's memory of reading it! I stand corrected.

We might not want to know how commonplace this is across NCAA member institutions.

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