The College Fix

ESPN reports some shocking allegations of academic fraud from a former University of North Carolina basketball star:

Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on the North Carolina basketball team that won the 2004-05 national title, told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that tutors wrote his term papers, he rarely went to class for about half his time at UNC, and he remained able to play largely because he took bogus classes designed to keep athletes academically eligible.

McCants told “Outside the Lines” that he could have been academically ineligible to play during the championship season had he not been provided the assistance. Further, he said head basketball coach Roy Williams knew about the “paper class” system at UNC. The so-called paper classes didn’t require students to go to class; rather, students were required to submit only one term paper to receive a grade.

McCants also told “Outside the Lines” that he even made the dean’s list in the spring of 2005 despite not attending any of his four classes for which he received straight-A grades. He said advisers and tutors who worked with the basketball program steered him to take the paper classes within the African-American Studies program…

Read the full story at ESPN.com

The College Fix has previously reported on the history of fraudulent no-show classes that were offered to athletes at UNC by the university’s African-American Studies department.

And we have published examples of the shockingly poor work for which students were given ‘A’ grades, including a one-paragragh essay on Rosa Parks that counted as an entires semester’s work and earned one athlete an A-.

McCants recent comments to ESPN reveal even more details about how the system of phony classes actually worked at UNC. The corruption was rampant. It ultimately functioned as a kind of cooperative effort at academic fraud carried out with the knowledge and/or assistance of coaches, tutors, professors, and the former dean of the African-American studies department, Julius Nyang’oro, who allegedly handed out grades for classes that never met, which were filled only with student athletes.

All of this occurred, mind you, at what is widely considered to be one of the premiere public universities in the country. It’s remarkable that so many individuals were willing to go along with this kind of corruption, all in order to keep athletes on the field.

It will take a long time for UNC to live down the disgrace of this scandal, which went on for many years and involved hundreds of student athletes enrolled in its African-American studies classes.

The most shocking aspect of this scandal is the fact that it was allowed to go on for so long, with the full complicity of so many.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden

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