Fallout continues for UNC

Editorial by Durham Herald-Sun, June 12, 2015.

A crucial accrediting agency this week left no doubt, if anyone still had a shred, that academic infractions have seriously compromised the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

While praising the work current officials have done to clean up the mess created by more than a decade of mostly sham “paper classes” in one department, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS) has put the state’s flagship university on probation for a year.

Despite the recent efforts at redress, the SACS board “still felt the issues were serious enough to put them on probation,” Belle Wheelan, the group’s president said. Among the seven violations of SACS policies the board cited was the assertion that the university failed to conduct itself with integrity, a striking rebuke to a school that has long prided itself in having just that.

It would seem highly unlikely, especially given UNC’s multiple efforts underway to put its house in order, that the university will face any further sanctions when the year-long probation ends. But in truth, it seemed unlikely a university of UNC’s stature and reputation could have overlooked the fraudulent courses, and for so long.

SACS had after its first investigation of the situation merely concluded it should monitor UNC, but then it – and the university leadership – learned from former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein’s exhaustive report that participation in and knowledge of the scheme spread far more broadly than just a department secretary and chairman.

The SACS sanctions are a reminder that two forces served to lead UNC into this embarrassing position. One might best be characterized as hubris – for many, the prospect of such sleaziness seemed too at variance with their view of the school to be plausible. It may have been why too few questions were asked, not enough skepticism raised, as the sham courses continued year after year with academic counselors in the athletic department blatantly steering students toward them and intervening for high grades.

The other, of course, as we and many others have observed before, is the corrosive effect of major-college athletics’ growth into a major industry fueled by oceans of money from television rights. There seems to be neither will nor easy way to check that growth.

That doesn’t in any way justify the misdeeds at UNC, or any university. But there’s little question it has created pressures and a climate that can seduce people at even a fine university with the aspirations of UNC into bending the rules.

http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/editorials/x1845462704/Fallout-continues-for-UNC