… is that Glenn Reynolds assumes no one’s noticing.

… When hundreds of fake courses can be taught, to often functionally illiterate students, without anyone noticing, it suggests that there’s not much going on in the way of quality control. UNC isn’t even offering makeup classes for this fake coursework, meaning that the bogus credits will remain on students’ transcripts…

It’s possible that this problem is limited to the University of North Carolina, and that some particularly toxic strain of corruption has somehow infested its lovely Chapel Hill campus. But it’s more likely that UNC isn’t as unusual as all that. Near-illiterate athletes are certainly not limited to UNC…

[I]t’s also quite possible that many classes, taught at many schools, are only a cut or two above the no-show classes that Julius Nyang’oro allegedly offered. Because if you can get away with offering hundreds of bogus classes at a top American university for years before anyone notices, the quality control [in general] isn’t very high.

Everyone notices. Everyone knows: the athletes, of course; the athletics department, the professors, the academic departments, the student body. The local rah-rah media. Unless the shit for some reason hits the fan really really hard (as happened at UNC), no one cares, no one’s going to talk about it, and no one’s going to do anything. And certainly nothing will come of this latest national university scandal, the whole UNC thing. It’ll blow over.

… rating, its criminally inept bureaucracy, its comically criminally inept bureaucracy, its criminal business school professor, its “financial waste, conflicts of interest, and possible fraud,” has outdone itself this time. A gang rape seems to have taken place on campus.

ASU declined to confirm [a rape] investigation, denying repeated attempts by [a] news station to obtain a copy of the police report and at one point claiming no such record existed.

Wouldn’t want to tell the students either. The handful of people who continue to call the crony compensation center home might consider leaving.

[T]he victim has since left the university… [H]er family said their main concern was that the university did not notify students of the incident.

“We’re going to make sure they understand that Jesus Christ should be in the center of our huddle, that that’s something that is important,” [said a University of Connecticut football coach]. “If you want to be successful and you want to win, get championships[,] then you better understand that this didn’t happen because of you. This happened of our Lord and Savior.”

(I’ve taken the quotation from an article that expresses indignation over U Conn’s, uh, reservations about the coach.)

… when all we care about is our receivers. When your football team is your university, as is the case at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, you’ll accept anyone who can catch a ball well, and you’ll make up pretend classes for those people to get A’s in so they can remain eligible to catch balls for your sports factory.

This has been true, is still true, and will remain true at all of America’s big-time sports schools, and if you think a little academic scandal is going to change that, you’re a fool. The system can’t work if you only admit college-level students.

The high schools do their bit – America now has a rich and complex system of diploma mills feeding their staight-A grads to the sports factories. All the sports factories have to do is keep the mill going – fake classes, fake grades, piece of cake.

If, as at Chapel Hill, the system occasionally breaks down and reveals itself to the world… Well, point one, the world already knew and doesn’t care; and point two, there is no point two.

And if, in a class action suit against the NCAA’s refusal to pay athletes for the commercial use of their names, the athletes’ lawyers point out that the only justification for this refusal – universities are providing athletes with an education – is a total joke (see above)…. Well, the NCAA has lawyers too. I’m sure they can get around this somehow. Still, it’s fun to read stuff like this:

The athletes are using the [Chapel Hill] case to contest the NCAA’s claim that the athletes were getting a meaningful education in exchange for helping universities and the NCAA make millions of dollars from their exploits on the football field or basketball court.

This week, Mary Willingham, the UNC learning specialist who blew the whistle on the lecture-style classes that never met, was named as a witness for the attorneys representing current and former college athletes in a class-action suit against the NCAA. The lawsuit is commonly known as the O’Bannon case, after former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon. He sued after seeing his likeness being used in EA sports video games without being paid.

The case, nearly 5 years old, has a trial date in June. Michael Hausfeld, one of the attorneys representing the athletes, said Willingham’s experiences as a former learning specialist for the athletes’ support program, plus her research into the academic abilities of those athletes, make her a strong witness. She would counter the NCAA’s claims that athletes can be barred from being paid for their athletic efforts because the universities are providing them an education.

“The NCAA is arguing that it is necessary to impose restraints on the athletes because in doing so, it promotes the integration of academics and athletics,” Hausfeld said. “We think that’s patently false, and we have other statistics that demonstrate that very vividly. Mary adds a personal experience which further highlights the falsity of that representation.”

I mean WHOOOPS. You forgot the educate them part!

But then, who could blame you? Ain’t nothing around here that looks like a university.

… on the financial crisis at Yeshiva University. If any of her pungent commentary makes it into the article, she’ll link you to it.

Really? Well, shut ma mouth.

Corrupted? Corrupted? Corrupted by the big bad hedgie!

Young Sidney who lived at the foot of the hill
Whose fame every virgin with envy doth fill…

How far the delicate lassie has fallen – caught in the clutches of SAC.

… is the chorus to Paul Simon’s The Boxer; it’s also how the University of North Carolina is responding to reports that some of its highest-profile, most-celebrated athletes over the years have been illiterate, or semi-literate. In the wake of the Nyang-oro scandal, UNC’s chancellor ran away; its faculty lay low (which is what faculty at sports factories almost always do); and the school shoved its admissions director onstage to lie for it.

[W]e do not admit students who we believe cannot read or write.

Inept, hotheaded Jehuda Reinharz, during his tenure as president of Brandeis University, threatened to sue a magazine for writing something he didn’t like, tried to shut down the campus museum, and presided over an alarming shrinkage in the university’s endowment.

Brandeis believes that advice from this sort of person – part-time advice – is worth $1.2 million to a cash-strapped university.

…it’s been hacked. I’ve cancelled the account. Meanwhile, if you’ve gotten strange messages from it, ignore.

… you don’t know what you’re going to find.

… Mr. Martoma changed some of his first-year [Harvard] law school grades from B’s to A’s, including one in criminal law. He then sent the forged transcript to 23 judges when he applied for federal clerkships.

… After Harvard expelled him, Mr. Martoma, who at the time was known as Ajai Mathew Thomas, legally changed his name to Mathew Martoma in 2001, the same year he entered Stanford. It is not known what name Mr. Martoma used on his Stanford application.

Three years after graduating from Stanford [who knew Stanford had an eye for forgers?], Mr. Martoma landed a job as health care stock portfolio manager at SAC Capital. Jonathan Gasthalter, an SAC spokesman, has declined to comment about whether Mr. Cohen’s hedge fund was aware of the Harvard incident when it hired Mr. Martoma.

Why not be honest and say We not only knew about it; it made him a shoo-in…

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Details, in case you want to give it a go.

In late 1998, Martoma, a graduate of Duke, altered the transcript of his first-year law school grades: He gave himself A’s in Civil Procedure, Contracts, and Criminal Law, rather than the B, B+, and B he’d earned, according to a Harvard Administrative Board report. He applied for clerkships with 23 judges using the altered transcripts. Weeks later, someone in the school’s registrar’s office discovered that the transcript had been changed. Martoma then withdrew the clerkship applications and told Harvard that the doctored transcripts had been sent out by mistake.

In a classic example of how the coverup is usually worse than the crime, Martoma appealed his dismissal from Harvard by arguing that he’d withdrawn the applications before he was caught and that the improper transcripts had been submitted accidentally. His efforts apparently involved creating a fake computer data forensics company, complete with a professional-looking marketing flyer, to corroborate the time stamps of his e-mails.

Chicago’s most scandalous university (see earlier posts about it by typing Chicago State University in my search engine) boasts a provost who allegedly plagiarized significant portions of her dissertation.

While he said it seems unlikely that [Angela Henderson] was “trying to pull a fast one,” the work shows that she does not have “a full and complete understanding of academic protocols and scholarly expectations.”

“That is a problem if that person is provost of a university,” [Daniel] Wueste said.

With its risible graduation rate (around 10%), its disappearing student body, its constantly shifting but always inept and crony-ridden administration, and its useless board of trustees, Chicago State boasts virtually every attribute of a truly terrible university. As its own faculty rebels, Chicago State’s paranoia grows out of control. The university’s spokesman, asked to comment about the plagiarism allegations, said “[W]e are talking about a series of claims made by some individuals who have shown they will go to great lengths to undermine any member of this administration in any way they can.”

Too right. The claims have been openly made by CSU faculty members who want legitimate people running the university. These faculty members are indeed trying to undermine the administration. It ought to be undermined.

… runs a CUNY program which makes its money the Trump way — by renting out its precious New York City space.

Of course, you could say that the space the program’s in is meant for the program.

And you could say that Wilson didn’t have permission to rent out the premises.

I mean, now that it’s figured out what Wilson’s doing, this is what CUNY is saying. Plus it’s really trying to get rid of the guy, since the rental thing is only one way, reportedly, in which he’s been, er, profiting from the center he runs.

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In response to the charges against him, Wilson’s doing far-left high-dudgeon.

“There is a long history of political persecution in the US, (and CUNY/BC) including the government frame-up of Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, W. E. B. DuBois prosecution, the frame-up of countless civil rights and labor leaders, and mass firings of CUNY faculty during the McCarthy era. This attack is part of that detestable history.”

It might work.

[Mary] Willingham … has said in interviews that she has received death threats and hate mail. [University of North Carolina Chapel Hill] police spokesman Randy Young said investigators have contacted her and “are responding appropriately.”

Why must Willingham die? Because she said this.

… Willingham said her research of 183 football or basketball players at UNC from 2004-12 found 60 percent reading at fourth- to eighth-grade levels and roughly 10 percent below a third-grade level. She said she worked with one men’s basketball player early in her 10-year tenure who couldn’t read or write.

Where the simulacrum ends.

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UD thanks Barney.