The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has been caught cooking the books to keep some 3000 academically troubled youngsters eligible, most of whom were in the revenue sports of basketball and football. Shocking! And this has been going on for 18 years, no less. According to the recently hired former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein, numerous elite athletes were allowed to take no-show courses in the University’s African and Afro-American Studies Departments to boost GPAs and thereby keep their eligibility (instructors also knew in advance the grade the athlete needed).  

Almost on cue the School’s Chancellor -- Carol Folt -- expressed surprise and said that nine perpetrators were taking full responsibility and had already been disciplined. In fact, this scandal was allegedly the work of a single culprit, Deborah Crowder, a now retired and quite lowly administrator and Tar Heel sports fanatic who just wanted to help Tar Heel teams win all the while assisting “academically challenged” kids. Yes, the school admitted, others might have suspected skullduggery but are only guilty of failing to exercise strict bureaucratic oversight.

As an academic lifer, including 28 years at the Big Ten University of Illinois-Urbana, I don’t believe that a single lowly administrator could for 18 years unnoticed run a massive cheating operation where countless students received top grades without ever interacting with a faculty member. Imagine these beneficiaries not telling anybody about their good fortune? It is similarly inconceivable that employees of the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes who steered students to the gift classes likewise could remain tight-lipped for 18 years.

The faculty surely must of have known about the terrible grades of “student athletes” in football and basketball and likewise encountered papers that could not possibly have been written by those handing them in. That some highly “challenged” youngsters legitimately managed to get to their junior or even senior year strains credulity.

All and all, the campus is a target-rich environment for any enterprising reporter who wants to expose the plain-to-see malfeasance. So, why the huge and largely successful cover-up? The answer is simple: top-rated basketball and football programs generate huge sums and keeping the lucre flowing requires bending the rules for academically deficient youngsters and such bending requires the active cooperation of hundreds, not just nine as the Chancellor alleges.  

Some of this gravy is well-known, for example, the cash received from appearing in post-season championship games (a single NCCA “March Madness” win in basketball could mean as much as $1.945 million to a school). Appearing in a post-season bowl game can bring $17 to $18 million. Then add local TV and radio rights plus fees from selling merchandise bedecked with the university’s logo. Winning sports also pays for lots of handsome salaries, from million dollar coaches to lowly trainers and tutors.

But these financial benefits are only part of the gravy train. When I was at Illinois the football team experienced several ups and downs. When it was winning, local commerce thrived -- hotel/motels (two-night minimum) sold out, restaurants and bars overflowed, thousands of visitors filled the shops and if the Illini won, the euphoria translated into buying sprees. The town’s media likewise participated in the feeding fest, extracting top dollar for anything to do with the Fighting Illini’s march to the Rose Bowl or March Madness.

The symbiotic relationship between this media and a successful sports program can help explain why cheating goes unnoticed. Successful college sports teams are the media’s Golden Goose, and no publisher or TV station owner will risk alienating school gatekeepers who control access by featuring stories of a star running back handing in plagiarized assignments. Getting with the program is a financial necessity -- what business will buy commercial spots on the coach’s radio show when the team is 1 and 5?

Top-rated athletic programs are also a godsend for alumni fundraising. Perks can include reserved parking for home games, invitations to the team’s pre-game dinners, “insider” meetings with the coaching staff, choice seating and on and on. Again, these rewards are valuable only if the teams excel and this requires willful blindness to all the chicanery surrounding “helping a struggling inner-city kid” get “a good education.”          

Let’s put cheating in terms of costs/benefits. Since the difference between athletic mediocrity and success might only involve one or two dozen blue chip recruits, the financial cost of the dishonesty is peanuts given the huge potential windfall. Just two middling paid professors can keep the entire basketball team eligible (a single “A” does wonders for a GPA). If a bar owner slips a financially struggling player a little extra cash, this is a pittance compared to the revenue what his bar can generate in one post-victory celebration. A star basketball player would get millions in the NBA; in college his “pay” might be a no-show “B” in African American Studies, an “A” in Black Studies for a plagiarized paper and similar meaningless “academic” rewards. What a bargain for the school!

Absent screwups like what occurred at North Carolina, there are no losers in this charade. What “student athlete” will grumble about their counterfeit grades and all their other on-the-sly benefits? Yes, the odds of turning pro are small, but this is by far the best shot. And, there is a social justice dividend insofar as the university enhances its faculty and student diversity and, as we have noted, the school’s potential financial rewards are huge. Welcome to the odd world where rich white conservatives sports boosters stand shoulder-to-shoulder with über PC Professors of Black Studies to promote diversity.

As for a downside, North Carolina has been “penalized” by having to offer free real classes to those who passed the phony ones and write a letter to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Colleges affirming current compliance with its rules. Clearly, when laid out in costs and benefits, the incentives to cheat are almost irresistible and once rivals take this path, cheating resembles an arms race. 

The real message of the North Carolina scandal is that schools should be more careful and, take my word, this is hardly rocket science. Only an incompetent administrator would tolerate a no-show course in an iffy department like Black Studies; far better to enroll jocks in “gut” courses in traditional departments and then hire a tutor, perhaps the course’s  Teaching Assistant,  for one-on-one help (and don’t make it too obvious with a grade of “A” when a “B-“ will suffice). Also use “work experience” courses where a grade requires just an internship with the local ACORN. Keeping star athletes out of jail is a tough one but I am reminded of Peter Gent’s novel North Dallas Forty where wealthy alums of a Texas school bought the crime prone star football player his own Seven-Eleven that he could rob whenever he felt the urge.

All and all, what occurred in Chapel Hill should hardly shock. Only its clumsy stupidity is remarkable. Such cheating is nearly ubiquitous, and down deep, as 18 years of silence attests, very few really care about the poor kids lured to schools for “an education” who are in fact little more than unpaid entertainers. Where are all the campus activists who obsess over Asian sweatshops? The silence surrounding the 18 years of exploitation should be the scandal, not the high grades for nonexistent courses handed out by some lowly administrator.