With the conclusion of its investigation into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the National Collegiate Athletics Association exhausted the last available measure of accountability for what was arguably the most pervasive academic fraud at a major research university in at least a generation.
The association’s report, which found no clear evidence of an academic rules violation, all but ensures that none of Chapel Hill’s top brass will ever be disciplined for a system of phony classes that helped Tar Heel athletes to remain academically eligible over an 18-year span. The university’s academic and athletics leaders, some of whom have retired or moved on, were largely unscathed by a scandal that mostly implicated lower-level employees.
Chapel Hill officials say they put their house in order years ago. Following a damning independent investigation, which was concluded in 2014, the university disciplined or fired seven people. The most senior among them was a Roberta (Bobbi) Owen, the senior associate dean for undergraduate education, who was barred from any future administrative duties but remains a distinguished professor of dramatic art.
No head coaches, vice presidents, or college deans were directly implicated, and none were punished for what Kenneth L. Wainstein, a longtime official of the U.S. Justice Department, described as a systemic failure of oversight at one of the nation’s most-prestigious public universities.
There were no professional consequences, for example, for Roy A. Williams, the head men’s basketball coach, who maintains he knew nothing of the scheme. Over the course of eight years, Mr. Williams’s players enrolled 167 times in the no-show classes. Almost half of the students who took the classes were athletes, even though they make up only 4 percent of the student body.
Richard A. (Dick) Baddour, whose 14-year tenure as the university’s athletics director overlapped with most of the academic fraud, resigned in 2011 amid a different NCAA investigation of improper benefits and academic misconduct.
H. Holden Thorp, who was chancellor when the irregular classes came to light, has said he had no prior knowledge of the problem. He resigned of his own accord, in 2013, before the Wainstein report was released, and is now provost at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has long been viewed as the president’s heir apparent.
The NCAA’s findings on Friday reiterate the notion that blame for the scandal rests almost solely with two individuals: Deborah Crowder, a secretary and then manager in the department of African and Afro-American studies; and Julius E. Nyang’oro, who was then chairman of the department. Together, they devised what the Wainstein report described as a “shadow curriculum” of classes that required no attendance, no interaction with professors, and no coursework beyond a single paper that was consistently given high marks.
“Looking back from today, it is hard to understand how College officials allowed this oversight failure to happen,” Mr. Wainstein’s report says. “One can speculate that it may have been the product of inertia, a lack of management-level leadership and the acceptance of certain supposed truisms — e.g. that strong oversight cannot coexist with academic independence in an elite university or that such oversight is unnecessary in a school with traditions of academic and athletic excellence — that nobody questioned until it was too late.”
In a scandal that revealed poor management and lax oversight, very few people with significant management or oversight responsibilities were punished. Here is a list, based on UNC disclosures, of the people who have borne the brunt of the scandal’s fallout. Just two of them had six-figure salaries, and the median compensation of those most strongly implicated was less than $70,000.
Fired
Brent Blanton
Mr. Blanton, who was an academic counselor to the women’s soccer team, among other roles, steered players toward classes that he knew to be “unorthodox at best,” according to the Wainstein report.
Ending salary: $69,943
Beth Bridger
Ms. Bridger — a director of academic support for athletes whose role included overseeing the football staff — was among two counselors who, in 2009, gave a PowerPoint presentation warning coaches that the no-show classes would likely end. The classes, the presentation said, had been “part of the solution” to keep athletes eligible because players “didn’t take notes” or “have to stay awake.”
Ending salary: $60,720
Jaimie Lee
Ms. Lee — an academic counselor for athletes, who focused on football — was a co-presenter of the infamous PowerPoint presentation.
Ending salary: $39,483
Travis Gore
Mr. Gore — an associate who worked in the department of African and Afro-American studies — handled administrative tasks, such as answering the phone and running office errands. He later assisted in scheduling fraudulent classes.
Ending salary: $32,703
Resigned
Jeanette M. Boxill
In email exchanges with others at the university, Ms. Boxill — an academic counselor to women’s basketball and a former ethics-center director at Chapel Hill — discussed the grades necessary to keep athletes eligible. In one instance, she wrote, “a D will be fine; that’s all she needs.”
Ending salary: $85,970
Timothy J. McMillan
Mr. McMillan, a senior lecturer in the department of African and Afro-American studies, signed grade sheets for classes he did not teach and “effectively knew what was happening,” according to the Wainstein report.
Ending salary: $46,040
Julius Nyang’oro
Mr. Nyang’oro, chairman of the department of African and Afro-American studies, helped perpetuate the scheme and taught some of the phony classes. He resigned as chairman of the department in 2011, as the fraud came to light. He retired in 2012.
Ending salary: $159,249
Disciplined
Roberta (Bobbi) Owen
Ms. Owen, senior associate dean for undergraduate education, admonished the chairman of the department of African and Afro-American studies for teaching as many as 300 independent studies in an academic year. But she never followed up, missing an opportunity to end the charade years before it was exposed. She has been permanently barred from administrative duties, but retains a faculty position.
Ending administrative salary: $143,128
Left Before Scandal Broke
Deborah Crowder
Ms. Crowder, a secretary and manager of the department of African and Afro-American studies, designed the so-called paper classes. While she had no faculty position, she graded students’ papers. She retired in 2009.
Ending salary: $36,130
Cynthia Reynolds
Ms. Reynolds, a former associate director of the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes and head football counselor, left Chapel Hill in 2010. She steered athletes toward the phony classes. In a 2009 email, she expressed concern that Ms. Crowder’s retirement could hamper player eligibility. Ms. Reynolds is now an academic programs administrator at Cornell University’s School of Applied & Engineering Physics.
Ending salary at Chapel Hill: $69,451
Wayne Walden
Mr. Walden, an academic adviser for men’s basketball who retired in 2009, routinely called Ms. Crowder to arrange for players to have spots in courses that he knew to be irregular.
Ending salary: $84,902
