UNC, you’re not alone. The National Collegiate Athletic Association is investigating allegations of academic misconduct on 20 campuses, the association’s head of enforcement told The Chronicle on Tuesday.
The cases are at various stages, from preliminary inquiry to awaiting a hearing with the Division I Committee on Infractions, and they involve a variety of missteps, including allegations that players received impermissible assistance from professors, academic advisers, or people outside of an athletic department. Eighteen of the cases are in Division I, one is in Division II, and one is in Division III. The official declined to name any of the colleges.
Last month Jonathan Duncan, the NCAA’s vice president for enforcement, said the association was investigating potential academic violations at 12 to 15 colleges.
In an interview on Tuesday, NCAA officials said they were looking at alleged academic misconduct in 20 athletic programs.
Last year, in response to growing concerns over academic fraud, the NCAA established an academic-integrity group within its enforcement department, naming Katherine Sulentic, a former academic adviser at the University of Colorado at Boulder, as its chair. In the coming months, Mr. Duncan said, he plans to bolster that unit.
The NCAA’s 60 or so investigators already receive training on what constitutes academic fraud and how to handle potential academic violations. Ms. Sulentic will provide additional training to a handful of enforcement officials. Her goal, she said, is to help them better understand NCAA rules on academic eligibility and to learn more about the documents that are available to aid in investigations.
“The timing is right to dedicate more resources to this,” Ms. Sulentic said. “Everyone’s antenna is up about academic fraud on a college campus in general.”
A Wide Network
Allegations of academic misconduct are on the rise in college sports, and represent a growing share of the 120 cases the NCAA is investigating.
In November the association’s Division I Committee on Infractions placed Weber State University on probation for three years and reduced scholarships in its football program after finding that a mathematics instructor there had helped five football players cheat. The instructor, who is no longer at the university, reportedly obtained access to players’ online accounts and helped them complete quizzes and tests.
The Weber State violations mirrored some of the findings in a recent Chronicle investigation that exposed a nationwide cheating scandal involving hundreds of college athletes. The article described how a former college-basketball coach had systematically exploited online classes to help players gain NCAA eligibility. Mr. Duncan said he had a plan to deal with some of the problems that the article brought to light, but he declined to elaborate.
In December the NCAA ordered a nine-meet suspension for Jack Bauerle, the head coach of swimming and diving at the University of Georgia, after determining that he had asked a professor to register a star swimmer in a fall independent-studies class after the fall semester had ended.
The NCAA is also reportedly investigating allegations of widespread academic violations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An independent report, released in October, found that academic advisers there had directed hundreds of players to no-show classes that helped them stay eligible for sports.
Mr. Duncan and Ms. Sulentic attributed the increase in alleged academic violations to a variety of factors, including stricter NCAA academic standards and a rise in cheating among college students in general.
They said that many of their current cases involved people who had relationships with an athletic department or a particular sports program, but who were not necessarily employed by the department. Those include professors, academic advisers who work outside of athletics, and people in the registrar’s office.
Coaches are also involved. In some cases, head coaches have urged members of their staff—secretaries, athletic trainers, people in the weight room—to “get this young man or woman eligible,” Ms. Sulentic said.
“It’s not necessarily a directive about what to do—‘I need you to write this kid’s paper,’” she said. But she said coaches were making “proclamations” to a broad network of people, encouraging them to cheat on behalf of current players or recruits.
The association is also seeing other people involved in players’ lives, including agents, amateur basketball coaches, or financial planners, taking inappropriate steps to help players gain eligibility.
“They might say, ‘In exchange for you working with me in the future, I’m going to get you eligible to play Division I ball,’” Ms. Sulentic said. “What consistently surprises me is the definition of the word ‘help.’”
Brad Wolverton is a senior writer who covers college sports. Follow him on Twitter @bradwolverton.
