Dive Brief:
- The accreditor for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is questioning the school’s compliance with its standards, following last month’s comprehensive report on the paper-classes-for-athletes scandal.
- The accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College, orders UNC-Chapel Hill to respond by Jan. 7 to questions about compliance with 18 standards, the News & Record reported.
- The accreditor said the university had previously blamed the scandal on the actions of just two people, but that the new report — by Kenneth Wainstein, a former federal prosecutor — shows that a larger network of people in athletics and academics knew what was going on.
Dive Insight:
Regardless of how the questions are answered, the letter from the accreditor is an indictment of how the university has handled the scandal and failed to assign blame to every person responsible for allowing the paper classes to go on so long — from 1993 to 2011. Students, including athletes who needed easy grades, were enrolled in classes through the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, where they needed only to pass in one paper, without attending the class or interacting with faculty.