Accrediting Agency Puts UNC on Probation

The agency that accredits the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has placed UNC on a twelve-month probation as a result of the scandal involving 3,100 students, most of them athletes, taking sham courses over a period of thirteen years. ""It is the most serious sanction we have,"" the president of the accrediting agency said. The only more severe sanction would be revoking the University's accrediation, an action that terminates federal aid and generally results in a college's demise. A story about the action is available here.

Will the NCAA use the accrediting agency's action as an excuse to temper its own sanctions? This was a massive fraud scheme carried on over many years and involving athletes in most of the University's athletic programs. UNC's initial reaction to disclosure of the scheme was to engage in a cover-up and to personally attack a key whistleblower.

What was the main objective of the scheme? Clearly, it was intended to benefit the University's athletic programs by keeping athletes academically eligible. Anything less than the ""death penalty"" for the programs that UNC cared most about protecting -- men's basketball and football -- will be inadequate. The NCAA should require the termination of those programs for at least two or three years.

Far more than justice for UNC is at stake. This scandal should sound the tocin for system-wide reform. Colleges and universities are special institutions. They purport to teach values such as honesty and integrity. To teach them, they must exemplify them. But universities have been sucked into system that requires them to sell their souls for the money and visibility generated by men's football and basketball. Alumni and fans know the system is rotten to the core, but they pretend otherwise for the sake of entertainment and rah-rah goodtimes. The UNC scandal should galvanize college presidents, faculties, and trustees into declaring that the hypocricy has gone far enough. The NCAA should do its damndest to turn this scandal into a catalyst for real change.