Commentary on the University of North Carolina scandal at Bloomberg Businessweek.
Known for rigorous academics, North Carolina allegedly operated a Potemkin department since the late 1990s.
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[Nyang’oro] cannot possibly have executed this massive lie on his own. The university’s provost, James Dean Jr., told the [New York] Times that UNC couldn’t have anticipated or detected Nyang’oro’s 14-year-long reign of fraud. “Universities for a very long time have been based on trust,” the provost said. “One of the ramifications of this is that now we can no longer operate on trust.” That’s laughable.
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Would UNC have tolerated the thorough undermining of an entire academic department other than Afro-American studies? Hard to picture. Could Nyang’oro and those who presumably aided and abetted him have come up with course titles any more likely to please skeptics of black-oriented scholarship?
The first three classes confirmed to have been fraudulent, according to the News & Observer, pretended to offer students training in the Swahili language. An old-time Carolina Klan member couldn’t have conjured that detail in his most virulent daydream.
… is that the school remains – even after Paterno-Sandusky – almost exclusively about sports. Penn State truly seems incapable, even after all it’s still going through, of being a university. It’s as if the citizens of Moscow were still spending most of their time arguing about whether the city should take down a statue of Leonid Brezhnev.
You and I know that big-time university sports is the front porch of the university. We know this because if you Google the phrase you’ll encounter every mentally challenged apologist for the activity repeatedly mouthing it.
We also know that, like most flagrantly corrupt activities, big-time university sports is constantly hitting the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, as millions of shocked Americans attempt to grapple with this week’s astounding unprecedented revelation of academic fraud; misuse of tax money; gun play among the hotly recruited; massively overpaid coaches staggering drunk out of their Hummers and having it out on YouTube with the local constabulatory, blah blah blah.
I don’t mean blah blah blah this is boring; I mean blah blah blah it’s the first of the year and I’m not going to do the whole list.
Respectable big-time sports schools (a vanishing species) attract the attention of the nation’s respectable press, and Exhibit A this morning is the University of North Carolina, which has indeed managed to introduce something unprecedented to the list.
But this shouldn’t surprise us, because the bigger and more, as it were, automated, university sports gets, the more illegal innovations you’re going to see.
So now we have, for the first time, the chair of a major department at a major American university in court for…
What to call it? It’s actually not unprecedented as an activity… Goes on all the time in fact… It’s just that department chairs rarely get caught doing it, and if they do get caught, like Thomas Petee at Auburn and Leo Wilton at SUNY Binghamton, they don’t end up indicted by a grand jury for… Again, what to call it? Theft of courses?
Because think about it. Think about what all of these department chairs (and tons of others like them across the United States) are doing. They are conjuring totally pretend independent studies for hundreds of athletes. You need to understand that absolutely nothing happens here. I can feel you resisting this understanding. NADA. Get it?
The chair, who of course can do what he wants administratively in these matters (I mean, could do… before chairs of university departments became, thanks to Petee, Wilton, and Nyang’oro, not-yet-indicted-co-conspirators…), has his assistant fill out the paperwork or the online stuff, and then has the assistant submit A‘s around the end of the semester, and that is it.
Now all of these institutions – Auburn, Binghamton, Chapel Hill – know precisely what’s going on. They make every effort to appoint and reappoint these guys chair of their departments because the scam fucking works, man. Lots of moveable parts to be sure but the athletes shut up about it, and I mean the chair. He’s the chair! Are other people in the department going to complain? They stand to materially benefit or not from decisions the chair makes.
The NYT seems surprised that the UNC thing went on for decades.
… Mr. Nyang’oro was [reportedly an] inattentive administrator who was often out of the country, even when he was supposed to be teaching. [Campus observers say] that his continual reappointment as the department chairman, a job most professors hold for 10 years at most, reflected the university’s indifference to what was going on there.
Indifference? Full-hearted support, kiddies. Nyang’oro made a big ol’ base salary on top of the big extra money he got for having someone fill out independent study and end of semester grade forms.
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Of course now things are much better at UNC. If you’re looking for an academic job, you can really look forward to working there!
[There are new] stringent controls over the curriculum and faculty in which, for instance, course syllabuses will be monitored, faculty teaching assignments regularly reviewed, and classes subject to spot checks to ensure they are actually meeting.
Yessiree, big-time sports are a boon to the university. They introduce exciting new regimes under which professors, actively distrusted by their universities as a source of fraud, indictments, and front-page New York Times coverage, are now subject to close surveillance.
As UD has said elsewhere, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a professor has only one chance to make a good first impression. Keep your nose clean, UNC guys! You never know when your minders are going to show up.
… the trinity of America’s Christian diploma mills, the three-point theology of our creedal unaccrediteds, the pivot-point ministry of our basketball brethren — UD loves to watch dribblers for the deity at work on her soul.
These college students “focus,” says one team’s coach, “on bringing glory to God in whatever we do,” and losing games by hundreds of points is what they do to bring undecideds like UD to the Lord.
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But the scoffers! O lord, the scoffers!
They are blocking UD’s prayer shot.
Want to make some money? Start a divinity school offering a Bachelor of Theology degree in Pastafarian Studies, and round up some buddies. Troll the coaching forums or hang out at the Final Four, tell coaches you’re the USM Noodly Appendages head coach, and you’ve got an open date on some Saturday in November. Book the game, show up, lose by 100, and cash your $50,000 check.
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To grapple with the theological implications of all this, go here.
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UD thanks Dave.
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Update on one of America’s universities:
– Their website doesn’t load and they don’t have a Wikipedia page
– They do have an regularly updated Twitter:
Are u interested in playing basketball or volleyball for the Champion Tigers? Call 501-623-2272 for more information on our sports programs!
– The person that Twitter says is the school’s president, Eric Capaci, is also listed as the school’s head basketball coach …
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Okay, try this.
Take this painting of Saint Sebastian …
… and imagine him pelted with basketballs rather than arrows. This puts Champion Baptist squarely in the martyrdom tradition.
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Wow. This here’s getting to be a big national story real quick. Google News is going razorback wild!
Now ol’ UD‘s gonna make a perdiction. You jest set there and listen.
Champion Baptist University is in Arkansas, and you don’t gotta read too much University Diaries (put the word ARKANSAS in my search engine) to know that pret’ near the whole state of Arkansas is one big fat insult to the word university. So this here latest thing don’t help.
Airgoe, UD makes the following perdiction. We’re gonna be hearing from Mike Huckabee any minute. Somebody’s gotta step up and defend the state, and that’s gonna be – gotta be – our next president. Y’all hold on and see if I’m not right.
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Attendance: Just a smidgeon over two hundred souls. ‘Course now it’s famous, everybody’s gonna claim they was at the game.
And I know you’ve heard this before on this blog, but I’ve just gotta say it one more time: The whole spectacle was paid for by you and me. Your education taxes at work.
And the tweets keep coming.
My Marketing class had a higher attendance than this Beef O’Bradys Bowl.
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If you watch the Beef O’Bradys bowl, look for me. Trust me you’ll be able to find me, there are 200 people in here.
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What can UD say? Your education tax dollars at work.
Dummies make the cutest commissioners.
But in the world of big-time sports, who listens to them? What do you think this is, an institution of higher learning?
UD has told you about U Mass (gruesome posts aplenty here), so you aren’t surprised that this absurdity has now fired at great expense their new coach, and will soon hire at great expense another new coach. No one comes to the games, so it’s not clear to whom this activity has any relevance.
Oh yeah. U Mass professors. And I guess students.
After the successful extra-point attempt went into the stands, the mostly-empty stadium provided its loudest ovation of the night in support of the fans who tried to keep the ball away from security by throwing it around the seats.
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UPDATE: The situation at this particular university event is drawing a lot of commentary. Read some of it here, and revel again, on this Christmas day, in the blessings of being an American taxpayer.
Why is Forbes writer Josh Freedman raising his eyebrows at college football?
There are so many reasons. But the one he has in mind is ye olde charitable deduction:
T. Boone Pickens gave $165 million to a charitable foundation attached to Oklahoma State University for a new football stadium and new housing and dining options for OSU athletes. Whether that is worthy of charity is not even the issue here: Less than one hour later, the foundation invested all of Pickens’ donation money – plus another $37 million in other donations – into a hedge fund run by Pickens.
Ya follow?
After taking Pickens’ money and reinvesting it into Pickens’ hedge fund, the school borrowed money (tax-exempt) to build the stadium. By borrowing at this lower, tax-exempt rate while investing the original donation and keeping the gains of that investment, the school was attempting to earn money simply off of its tax-favored status.
Got that?
Be sure to read Freedman on luxury seats and executive salaries too.
It’s all a little hard to follow, but the main thing you need to know is that it’s your money paying for this – the seats, ol’ Boone’s largesse…
From the New York Times:
… Sports like rowing … are left to suffer.
Last year, the University of Maryland cut seven varsity sports. In 2006, Rutgers chopped six. The week that Temple announced its cuts, Robert Morris, a private university near Pittsburgh, announced that seven varsity teams were on their way out.
Obviously, none of the sports on the block were football or basketball…
What kind of a business case can you make for a sport like rowing, which is not even one conducive to spectators (because the course is 2,000 meters long), much less one that makes no money for the university? Well, a weak one, if any. But that’s the whole point of amateurism, the quality that is supposed to fuel college sports in the first place.
… But is this latest round of cuts the end at Temple? What if the football team doesn’t start generating big bucks, enough to sustain the smaller programs?
You have to wonder if we will wake up one day, glance at the sports offered at the Temples, the Marylands and the Rutgerses of the world and see two words left: Football. Basketball.
Keep the American university a lean mean money-losing machine. Without revenue, more and more courses will go online. Eventually the only non-virtual campus activities will be football games and post-game riots.
“[Skip] Holtz and Jim Leavitt are the only coaches in USF history and both were fired,” a sports writer explains, blandly enough.
Hired, fired, big deal. The only two coaches you’ve ever had, both fired. So what. Sunrise, sunset. To everything there is a season. Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
But when you actually pursue the narrative behind this bland fact, the bland fact of having had two football coaches in your school’s history, and having fired both of them, you begin to grab hold of the de profundis primitivism of so many American university football programs as they pump out losers, bullies, thieves, and litigants, one after another… All welcomed with pomp and excitement and even love…
The second-in-the-series is particularly cherished, by contrast with the scurrilous cur first-in-the-series, the villain we so wanted to love, in whom we invested our deepest hopes.
Trying to compare Holtz and Leavitt is like trying to compare Auntie Em with Cruella de Vil or Flounder from The Little Mermaid to the shark from Jaws. It’s like the difference between Mom’s homecooking and prison food.
Jim Leavitt was fired for punching players.
Skip Holtz prefers hugging them.
Holtz, if you couldn’t tell, is my new favorite college football coach in the state. Why? Because he makes my job easy, that’s why. He’s friendly and fun. He’s accessible and approachable.
USF’s Holtz was Francis to Leavitt’s Benedict. Adenauer to Leavitt’s Hitler. Ford to Leavitt’s Nixon. Our long national nightmare is over. Morning in America. Hugs all around.
But then the head of the university’s board of trustees had his meltdown.
The one-line email was fired off at 3:26 p.m. Saturday, within a minute of the end of USF’s humbling 37-28 loss at Temple, and it was sent to the chief of staff of USF president Judy Genshaft.
“Disgusting and unacceptable,” it read.
Always wondered what the board of trustees of a university does, didn’t you? Goes to football games, gets pissed when the team loses, orders the president to fire the coach. Uh, y-y-yessir! Right away! Only it’s gonna cost a shitload in buyouts… And uh don’t forgot how much the lawsuit from the scurrilous cur cost us…
Throw money at him! Whatever it takes! Lose the fucker!
What if we, uh, get audited? There are laws, you know…
The University of South Florida overpaid three top administrators — and committed $1.7 million too much in severance for former football coach Skip Holtz, according to a state audit released this month.
According to Florida law, the school is allowed to pay administrators $200,000 from state funds for salary, bonuses and cash-equivalent compensation. That rule was broken in three instances, the audit found…
Auditors … took issue with the $2.5 million over five years that Holtz is being paid after he was fired a year ago. University employees’ severance pay can’t exceed 20 weeks of compensation, according to state law.
However, USF has contended the money is for damages, as spelled out in Holtz’s contract — not severance. The millions are required because Holtz was fired without cause, USF replied.
The Auditor General disagreed and concluded simply that the university should “ensure that future severance payments comply” with Florida law.
Now the University of South Florida pees itself with excitement upon the advent of its third savior. Throttlings, hugs, audits all around.
Those who think [University of Alabama football coach Nick] Saban is overpaid should consider the Seattle Mariners’ recent deal with infielder Robinson Cano for $240 million over 10 years. Does anyone think Cano is three times more valuable than Saban? Hardly.
And Cano is just one measly position. Saban’s coach. Right now he gets (when you throw in everything) something approaching ten million a year from the university. Which is too low when you consider the context.
[We] are nearing the point when top-level college coaching is a more lucrative gig than coaching the pros. That is astounding, in a sense — pro teams play more games, they get higher TV ratings, and they don’t have to support academic advisors or pay for volleyball scholarships.
In another sense, though, this is perfectly reasonable. Pro teams have so many tools they can use to improve. They can sign free agents, acquire draft choices or pour money into scouting. Some pro teams see coaches more as an extension of the front office, charged with implementing the philosophy (and following the advanced stats) preferred by the general manager.
College athletic departments, as currently constructed, don’t have as many tools. They can build new facilities to attract recruits, but that is way more expensive than hiring a coach like Saban (who would demand new facilities anyway). They can pay recruits under the table, but there is some risk involved, and some are reluctant to do it because it is against the rules. Besides, the mechanics of under-the-table payments are complicated. You can’t really write a check from a university account, make it out to a defensive end, and hope nobody finds out.
The whole university… conceit… puts special burdens on football programs, for which coaches should expect hardship pay. And now that, moneywise, there’s no difference between professional and non-professional, we’ve removed barriers to fair compensation. In the case of Saban, then, if we use the Cano standard of comparison, one billion over ten years seems appropriate.
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UD thanks Andre.
If you’re the faculty at Western Michigan University, you’d really like to know.
Or, I mean, you do know.
“Every department is hurting — bleeding faculty,” said [history professor Lewis] Pyenson. “We’re not going to be able to hire brilliant young professors. Older professors who know how to teach are going to retire. There likely will be shotgun marriages for departments.”
Pyenson contrasted the cuts in the College of Arts and Sciences with the amount spent on men’s football, saying that in a time of financial crisis, “what goes on in the classroom is clearly more important than what is going on at the 50-yard line. We should be fostering the mind instead of knocking kids senseless on the football field.”
What’s nice about this rather typical appraisal of America’s many football schools is that the writer names names. I mean, he doesn’t say this school and that school are no longer schools. He simply provides the data and lets you arrive at the obvious conclusion.
So the standouts, the almost-entirely-without-discernable-academic-missions, are:
University of Arkansas
University of Nebraska
University of Oklahoma
Auburn University
These are the Big Four, the prime nullities, that this particular author highlights – schools that spend huge sums on games and stadiums and all, and vanishingly little on education. So little that their academic mission is pretty much gone. There are plenty of other such places, including almost every school in West Virginia.
These four schools naturally take up a lot of air time on University Diaries, each of them a massive military industrial academic fraud violence against women drunk driving plus all them other naughty big boy thangs complex. Nebraska loved to death two of America’s current high-profile bad boys – Richie Incognito and Dominic Raiola – so that place (along with the University of Florida ’cause of loved-up Aaron Hernandez) is at the top of Google News lately. But Auburn, with its long tradition of massive cheating, and its board of trustees packed with former Auburn athletes, is perennially in the news, as are vastly corrupt Arkansas and Oklahoma…
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Speaking of tradition — that whole tradition thing, so important to all of these schools, can really backfire. Just like Penn State, all four schools on this guy’s list seem to think they have these glorious traditions…
When things go wrong in nullity schools, when the essential scumminess of what they’re about becomes too public, they often try to play this tradition card, as if the act of reminding people of the essential glory of what they’ve always been about will make people’s backs straighten… Yet these places forget that although they might have won many games over a long period of time, the scumminess was always there and everyone knows it…
So – here’s an example of the problem.
Louisiana State University is trying to get its students to stop commanding their game day opponents, in unison, on national television, to suck their dicks. How to go about this?
LSU decided to initiate something called Tradition Matters, which is essentially a series of notices all over campus, signed by the president of the school, asking students to stop saying suck my dick in unison on national television.
An LSU student journalist writes:
I didn’t realize how sleazy [the cheer] made my university look until I sat in a press box last season and watched my professional colleagues shake their heads in disgust.
Yet in what way will an appeal to LSU’s traditions help the matter? LSU qua football school has always been pretty sleazy… Indeed sleaziness is kind of a point of pride for the entire state of Louisiana... traditionally… It seems fully in keeping with Louisiana’s traditions that the president of an academic institution there would devote his time and the institution’s money to plastering campus with a plea that its scholars not get drunk and invite a national television audience to suck their dicks…
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So you see the problem. Nullity schools cannot make an appeal to their academic traditions, to the ethos of reason and moral reflection at the heart of non-null universities; they are forced to make an appeal to their athletic traditions. But athletic traditions at schools like these are as much about decades of publicly pleading for people to fellate you as they are about clean-limbed sportsmanship.
