Media MonsterNCAA Football

Today In Using The Term “Student-Athlete” Loosely: North Carolina Football Players Took A Class That Was Basically Fake

Players were enrolled and everything, but the class, AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina, held in the summer of 2011, never met. 18 of 19 students were current UNC football players and the 19th was a former player.

Ah, but there’s more.

Via the News & Observer:

“…academic advisers assigned to athletes helped the players enroll in the class, which is the subject of a criminal investigation.

The advisers also knew that there would be no instruction.

Other records show that football and basketball players made up a majority of the enrollments of nine particularly suspect classes in which the professors listed as instructors have denied involvement, and have claimed that signatures were forged on records related to them.

The new information is more evidence that student athletes, particularly football players, were being steered to classes that university officials now say are evidence of academic fraud because there was little or no instruction. An internal review found 54 such classes, and said all but nine of them were taught by Julius Nyang’oro, the longtime chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department. In each case, students were given an assignment such as a term paper and told to turn it in at the end of the semester.”

We could feign outrage or surprise or righteous indignation, but that would be dishonest. This is the naked truth at its finest, and it’s just funny. The real tragedy is that college isn’t like this for the rest of us. Granted I didn’t go to class much anyway, but this would have dispelled any nagging guilt to attend.

I suggest reading the story in its entirety over at the News & Observer, just because the depth of academic disregard is absurd.

[News & Observer]

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