So here’s where the ethos of the serious university hits up against a perfectly reasonable question from a person outside the university.

The greatest damage UNC’s corruption has done is not to its students’ degrees (despite all the coverage and hoo-hah, no one cares about what happened at UNC, and they won’t look at its graduates’ degrees any differently than they did before), but to the American university as such.

Why? Go back to those empty classrooms nobody noticed. Of course many people did notice; but they were in on the game. What about everyone else?

Serious American universities, like the American economy, ultimately run on trust. They are special places in part because there isn’t anyone racing around checking to see if you’re meeting your class. The assumption at serious universities is that faculty obviously meet their classes. It is that kind of community. It is a serious place full of serious people, both students and faculty.

UNC isn’t a serious university anymore (it can become one again); at UNC, in the wake of the scandal, all professors are subject to spot checks. At UNC

administrators are making surprise inspections in class to make sure courses are actually taking place.

You’re in the army now, fella! Sheets on tight? Maybe I’ll just burst in on you some afternoon…

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That is why no one noticed the empty classrooms. No one was looking. Everyone was trusting that a tenured professor, the chair of a department, a researcher in a recognized field, would – duh! – meet his classes. Are you kidding me?

UNC has fucked it up for all of us, especially those sentenced to life at a sports factory. Because now that the lid has fallen off UNC, it’s going to fall off a lot of other schools. Don’t forget that a critical mass of these absurdity-based institutions has been growing: Exactly the same academic hoax has been reported on at Auburn, SUNY Binghamton, etc. Everyone knows that a variant of the UNC scheme operates at virtually all of the big-time sports schools, and now that we’re paying attention, we can expect dozens of other unshocking revelations from other campuses.

The UNC thing goes straight to the heart of what distinguishes universities from all other institutions, all other workplaces. The university is an odd creature, a rare thing. Bartlett Giamatti called it “a free and ordered space.” Get it? Free and ordered?

It’s also a delicate thing. Our friends from the southland have really done a number on it.