Though UNC-Chapel Hill recently began investigating the largest academic scandal in its history, university administrators in the state and nationwide say the problem has likely been festering for some time.
Professors, administrators and athletics staff have raised concerns about the relationship between revenue sports and academics.
Steve Ballard, chancellor at East Carolina University, said in an email that the potential for academic fraud among student athletes has existed since college football and basketball became televised, high-revenue sports three decades ago.
And Terry Holland, athletics director at ECU, said in an email that the rise of high-revenue sports has had lasting impacts on colleges and universities.
“The chase for dollars is unintentionally compromising academic integrity and the breaking up (of) decades-old conference rivalries is only part of the collateral damage inflicted on intercollegiate athletics.”
Last year, it was discovered that an ECU women’s tennis player and academic tutor had written papers for four baseball players in 2010. The revelation prompted NCAA sanctions.
Jay Schalin, director of state policy analysis for the right-leaning John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, attributes recent scandals to a “perfect storm” of two factors — the nation’s increasing obsession with college athletics and the general lowering of scholastic standards.
But Edmund Gordon, chairman of the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin, said revenue-seeking universities must also be wary of abusing student athletes.
“Universities need to be held accountable for the fact that, at the top levels, you are taking generally disadvantaged black males, and you are making enormous amounts of money off of them,” he said.
