Years after reports surfaced about academic fraud tied to student athletes in the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s African studies department, an ex-professor who chaired the department faces a felony fraud charge.
Julius Nyang’oro will be in Orange County court this week to answer a charge of “receiving $12,000 from the university for teaching a lecture course in 2011 that never met — money the school recouped from his paycheck when he retired in 2012,” the Associated Press reports:
A 2012 inquiry conducted by former Gov. Jim Martin found problems in more than 200 African studies courses dating to the mid-1990s, including forged signatures on grade rolls, unauthorized grade changes and poor oversight. …
The problems included lecture classes with significant athlete enrollments that didn’t meet and were instead treated as independent studies requiring only a research paper. A university review reported two years ago that academic advisers referred athletes to enroll in those classes. …
A key member of the men’s basketball team that won the 2005 national championship said this month he managed to stay academically eligible thanks to African studies courses he didn’t attend, even making the campus dean’s list with As in four of the classes. Rashad McCants said tutors wrote papers for him and other players in the no-show classes and he believes coach Roy Williams knew what he and other players were doing.
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