UNC athletics scandal report says bogus classes, inflated grades pushed by coaches, counselors

JUST IN: UNC athletics scandal report says bogus classes, inflated grades pushed by coaches, counselors:

More details have emerged about one of the largest cheating scandals involving collegiate athletes is U.S. history thanks to a new investigative report released Wednesday.

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill had concocted a massive system to keep student athletes eligible to play, a set-up described by theNews & Observer as an 18-year scheme that included bogus classes, inflated grades and a “shadow curriculum” advanced by those in charge.

Everyone from coaches to academic counselors to a top official at the African and Afro-American Studies department were complicit in the scheme.

The N&O reports:

The system of no-show classes at UNC-Chapel Hill was pushed by academic counselors for athletes, hatched and enabled by two sympathetic officials in a key department and employed by coaches eager to keep players eligible, a new report into the long-running scandal has found.

The 18-year scheme generated inflated grades through lecture-style classes that had been quietly converted into bogus independent studies. The report, released Wednesday afternoon, found a new culprit: the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes.

[The report] found that the academic counselors had pushed for the easy classes and embraced those started by Deborah Crowder, a longtime manager for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. The report describes a fairly broad group of academic and athletic officials who knew about athletes getting better grades in classes that only required papers, yet taking little or no action.