Investigation reveals US university let athletes take fake classes
More than 3,000 students at University of North Carolina took fake classes as part of a program that allowed many to remain eligible to play sports
What?
Aren’t universities supposed to be where all the bright people are?
There’s amoeba at the bottom of the Marianna’s Trench that know about this, wolverines convene on the taiga to gossip about it. But then there’s no one so stupid as a bureaucrat insistent on not noting what they don’t wish to see, is there?
And absolutely no one at all should be thinking that this is happening at only one US university. It’s not even epidemic, it’s pandemic in the system. A 30 second conversation with most of those* playing college sport is all you need to divine that.
* Perhaps a touch harsh: but true of the major sports at the major sport playing places, if not of all sports at all colleges.
Not surprising there’s been a head in sand attitude, there’s a lot of people getting very rich on the back of college sportsmen, mainly football and basketball, being amateurs who aren’t allowed to make any money, not even from their own brand. Its akin to servitude.
How many Oxbridge Blues are Not studying land economy?
I was surprised at the numbers though; 3,000 of them at one university? I thought it was just the stars in a few high-profile sports.
That’s over some decades, not all at one time.
Pretty sure I recall reading somewhere that in 48 of the 50 States, the highest paid public employee is either an American Football or Basketball coach.
I’ve no idea which are are the two States that buck that trend but I suspect it’s probably going to be Alaska and Hawaii.
Many U.S. colleges have instituted computer-based courses, where you don’t even have to be present to win.
Unity, it’s not 48/50, but 39/50.
The exceptions are:
New Hampshire: Ice Hockey Coach.
Alaska, Nebraska, Vermont, Delaware: College President
North Dakota, South Dakota, New York, Massachusetts: Head of Med School
Maine: Head of Law School
Nevada: Head of Plastic Surgery Department in Med School
http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-employee-a-co-489635228 is the original source for this data.
@ BIF
All the Oxford ones for a start since Land Economy is only taught at Cambridge.
All the ones who got scholarship to read Maths …
All the ones I know/knew (and that’s a few score).
I knew three who required by their tutors to give up sport in their third year.
Oxbridge sport is genuinely amateur except occasionally for rowing.
I taught engineering at Ga Tech & had a failing 1st string football player in my class and was called by the head coach for a meeting. I was uncomfortable expecting pressure but he only hinted, quite nicely, about how important the guy was to the team and whether there was anything I could do. I told the coach I would be happy to provide additional private tutoring for the boy but his grades would be whatever he deserved and the coach thanked me kindly and accepted the offer with no more ado. Very few football players major in engineering or math (which I also taught) so my footballer was unusual from the start, but I received no pressure at all.
At a large state university a student himself filed a complaint that I graded too harshly and demanded I raise his final grade. The Dept Head called me in an read the complaint with a solemn face leading me to expect some rebuke, but then he smiled broadly and said, “Keep it up.”
Perhaps this is more common in the STEM colleges.
Richard Gadsdem – I love the stat for Nevada!!
Not surprising there’s been a head in sand attitude, there’s a lot of people getting very rich on the back of college sportsmen, mainly football and basketball, being amateurs who aren’t allowed to make any money, not even from their own brand. Its akin to servitude.
South Park did an excellent take on this, with one scene having Cartman dressing up as an antebellum slave trader and asking a college president how he gets away with not paying his slaves.
Tim Newman – “South Park did an excellent take on this, with one scene having Cartman dressing up as an antebellum slave trader and asking a college president how he gets away with not paying his slaves.”
It is an excellent take if you assess the value of their college education at zero. Which considering that most athletes seem to do something like African American studies is probably true.
I mean, seriously, how many Black students do you think would go to Ivy League colleges without athletics? And what do you think that degree is worth to them when they graduate? We don’t pay apprentices much either. Don’t even get me started on what we do to medical students.
I have to apologise: I got it slightly wrong.
I went to a college reunion yesterday that caused me to check up on a few things and I found that *one* of the blues I knew did read land economy. It hadn’t occurred to me because (a) he didn’t take up university sport (and an unfashionable one at that) until his second year and (b) he was not stupid – he was subsequently the senior partner of a firm of stockbrokers.
Land economy was designed for aristocrats who needed to learn how to run estates (or, perhaps, for their stewards) and was later misused but is almost irrelevant.