Accreditor Puts UNC-Chapel Hill on Probation in Fake-Classes Scandal

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been put on a one-year probation by its accrediting agency for the longtime fake-classes scandal exposed in full last year, The News & Observer reports.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges cited seven standards that the university had not met, including academic integrity and monitoring college sports. “It’s the most serious sanction we have,” Belle S. Wheelan, the commission’s president, said of the probation, which is the most severe penalty the group can levy short of revoking accreditation.

An investigation led by a former federal prosecutor, Kenneth L. Wainstein, found last fall that about 3,100 students in the department of African and Afro-American studies, over nearly 20 years, had taken advantage of a system of fake classes that was used to keep academically struggling athletes eligible to play.