(01-08-2014 10:02 AM)Carolina Stang Wrote:  The funny/sad thing is that teachers in North Carolina rank 48 out of 50 on the pay scale, and it takes 15 years of experience for a teacher in NC to make $40k. Think about that.

My wife taught in Northern VA (Fairfax County) and made almost twice as much as she does in North Carolina. Sickening.

And then you wonder why student-athletes at UNC read at or below an 8th grade level??

People make different amounts of money based on where they live.

Not all the kids at UNC are from the state.

It's not that connected and there are a myriad of other factors that are playing a bigger role.

(01-08-2014 10:02 AM)Carolina Stang Wrote:  My wife taught in Northern VA (Fairfax County) and made almost twice as much as she does in North Carolina. Sickening.

Fairfax is an expensive place to live, and North Carolina includes some very inexpensive places to live.

The Drake Groups recommendation and implementation would be moving college althletics in the right direction, I believe .

(01-08-2014 10:02 AM)Carolina Stang Wrote:  The funny/sad thing is that teachers in North Carolina rank 48 out of 50 on the pay scale, and it takes 15 years of experience for a teacher in NC to make $40k. Think about that.

My wife taught in Northern VA (Fairfax County) and made almost twice as much as she does in North Carolina. Sickening.

And then you wonder why student-athletes at UNC read at or below an 8th grade level??

The real issue at UNC is not letting a few dumb ones slide. The real issue was a concerted effort to create an entire curriculum for no-show and fake classes that go back nearly two decades. AFAM, Swahili, and the Sociology programs were involved. This degree of manipulation is rare.

It first became noticed as a problem when the frat boys found out about the fake classes and started signing up, that's when to get into these "classes" you had to go straight to the AFAM office. There has never been anything at all like this in the ACC.

UNC has always cheated - they started paying athletes back in the 40's with Choo Choo Justice. UNC has always had tutors or babysitters for the ones too stupid to find the class room. The scandal is giving a UNC degree to these morons.

Dean Smith graduated over 96% of his players - does that sound realistic to you?

We aren't talking about an easy major at a STEM school like NC State or GT, we aren't talking about only needing 90 hours to graduate at Duke - this is an issue where the entire fabric of the so-called education is fabricated out of whole cloth.

It's worse than anything that happened at UGa.

The real shame is that UNC-Ch is otherwise a damn good school and a multi-billion entity in the State of NC and for them to damage that all for basketball and football is insanity.

(01-08-2014 10:14 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  UNC has always cheated - they started paying athletes back in the 40's with Choo Choo Justice.

Wow, there's a name I hadn't thought of in years.

(01-08-2014 10:22 AM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 10:14 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  UNC has always cheated - they started paying athletes back in the 40's with Choo Choo Justice.

Wow, there's a name I hadn't thought of in years.

UNC's cheating is mentioned in the UVa faculty and BOV minutes from the 1950's. They hesitated at Maryland's invitation to join the ACC (the left the SOCon in 1937) due in large measure to UNC's cheating. (Virginia and Richmond/Greensboro based reporter Bill Brill wrote about this many times)

You can still find the minutes.

But Maryland cheated like hell as well and all the major ACC cheating oozed out of Oklahoma because MD and then UNC wanted OU's coach who was so shady was eventually run off (Tatum) - The ACC now gives an award in his name :)

(01-08-2014 09:53 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The failure of our K-12 system is creating all kinds of problems for higher education.

I firmly believe that half of our society's problems would be solved if our public education system were at least half competent.

starts before K5. it's the failure of the parent(s) that's the root of it all.

(01-08-2014 10:27 AM)blunderbuss Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 09:53 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  The failure of our K-12 system is creating all kinds of problems for higher education.

I firmly believe that half of our society's problems would be solved if our public education system were at least half competent.

starts before K5. it's the failure of the parent(s) that's the root of it all.

I agree.

But, let's make it interesting, aren't today's young children in K-12 the children of those who were also failed by the education system?

Cheating and paying players is one thing. In the 70's I saw a lot of $50 and $100 handshakes at Carmichael Auditorium, the Greensboro Coliseum, and in Reynolds.

I attended school with the dumbest kid to ever don a UNC uniform - Kevin Madden. I also attended school with the most immature kid to don an NC State uniform Chris Washburn. Madden was dumb, Wash had the maturity of a 12 year old.

I've seen first hand special treatment for ball players while at Duke, but even then, the player was forced to recite in front of the professor and forced to talk out the problems and forced to attempt to reason to get his C.

What UNC has done goes beyond the pale. It has the potential to hurt joint research with State and Duke. We don't need the NIH and the FEDs questioning research at UNC because of what's been allowed to go on at the undergraduate level. This is what's crazy, the athletic faction at UNC was allowed to get out of control. Now the money folks and academic folks have to fight to fix it.

(01-08-2014 10:14 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  UNC has always cheated - they started paying athletes back in the 40's with Choo Choo Justice.

Yup, much like Ric Flair, they're the dirtiest players in the game. They've just done an exceptional job at white-washing over the years.

So, please spare me the "everybody does this" crap. It might be true to a degree that MOST of the "big brand names" do but crap like this. Hell, ECU kicked multiple impact players off the team for MUCH less than what UNC is getting away with. Had guys kicked off for skipping too many classes.

(01-08-2014 10:14 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 10:02 AM)Carolina Stang Wrote:  The funny/sad thing is that teachers in North Carolina rank 48 out of 50 on the pay scale, and it takes 15 years of experience for a teacher in NC to make $40k. Think about that.

My wife taught in Northern VA (Fairfax County) and made almost twice as much as she does in North Carolina. Sickening.

And then you wonder why student-athletes at UNC read at or below an 8th grade level??

The real issue at UNC is not letting a few dumb ones slide. The real issue was a concerted effort to create an entire curriculum for no-show and fake classes that go back nearly two decades. AFAM, Swahili, and the Sociology programs were involved. This degree of manipulation is rare.

It first became noticed as a problem when the frat boys found out about the fake classes and started signing up, that's when to get into these "classes" you had to go straight to the AFAM office. There has never been anything at all like this in the ACC.

UNC has always cheated - they started paying athletes back in the 40's with Choo Choo Justice. UNC has always had tutors or babysitters for the ones too stupid to find the class room. The scandal is giving a UNC degree to these morons.

Dean Smith graduated over 96% of his players - does that sound realistic to you?

We aren't talking about an easy major at a STEM school like NC State or GT, we aren't talking about only needing 90 hours to graduate at Duke - this is an issue where the entire fabric of the so-called education is fabricated out of whole cloth.

It's worse than anything that happened at UGa.

The real shame is that UNC-Ch is otherwise a damn good school and a multi-billion entity in the State of NC and for them to damage that all for basketball and football is insanity.

Yes. UNC threatened the integrity of their whole institution, not just cheating for a few of the athletes who couldn't do it on their own.

They aren't alone, just the worst of the recent violators. I do think it was a good sign that some of these universities commented. That shows that they at least acknowledge and understand the issue. Georgia, LSU, Ohio St., Texas, Oklahoma St., Iowa St., Oregon St., Washington, Louisville and UNC all gave comments.

Louisville advisor was quoted as saying one of these athletes could barely read and later graduated from LSU and was in medical school. If they've got learning disabilities a lot of progress can be made. If they have never applied themselves a lot of progress can be made. But a major research university is not the place for that.

(01-08-2014 10:02 AM)Carolina Stang Wrote:  The funny/sad thing is that teachers in North Carolina rank 48 out of 50 on the pay scale, and it takes 15 years of experience for a teacher in NC to make $40k. Think about that.

My wife taught in Northern VA (Fairfax County) and made almost twice as much as she does in North Carolina. Sickening.

And then you wonder why student-athletes at UNC read at or below an 8th grade level??

There are three problems with this line of thought:

(1) You assume that most of the student athletes at UNC are in fact from NC. I would be willing to bet that they are not.

(2) Paying teachers more will never correlate with higher test scores if a reasonable measure is used. Also, teacher pay is determined by the market; in a state whose university systems produce as many teachers as North Carolina's does, the market is flooded and the wages are suppressed due to the high supply of labor.

(3) I would suggest that "the athletes who are unable to read" most likely come from poorer backgrounds, broken families and the public school system. The state they are from does not have anything to do with it.

(01-08-2014 12:48 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 12:34 AM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 10:06 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 09:34 PM)bullet Wrote:  These athletes really should be in a JC, not barely kept eligible in a Division I school.

JC? The problem starts long before that. It goes all the way down the ladder. A student who can't read should never be given a high school diploma, for that matter should never be promoted to high school at all until they've learned to read well.

Problem with that is that a lot of kids simply would never graduate from high school. For many of the kids in that situation, holding them back and failing them isn't going to increase their ability to learn appropriate reading and writing, math, science, history, etc.

Americans don't want to deal with it, but we would be far better served by a European system that has two tracks: professional & skilled. We do need to teach every child to read and write with some degree of competency as that goes hand in hand with other social responsibilities, and we need to teach every child addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, along with world history and U.S. history, but every child should not have to take algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics, biology, or advanced grammar, poetry, or logic, etc.

There are plenty of diagnostics before the 6th grade is completed that would be indicative of the likelihood of the degree of success with either track of academic pursuit. At that point the choice of track should belong to the child's parents, if not the child. At the college level the further development of either track could then be pursued. The guarantee should be for the basics of education as a baseline with the burden of development beyond that on the individual.

Its clear that this country doesn't want anything like the European model since we decided to gut the Vocation Track in the late 70's. Besides, I wouldn't want to pigeon-hole someone at such an early age. While to situation is unfortunate, there currently does not exist a solution. If the parents don't care enough about education and/or don't instill the value of education into their kids, then the probability of a teacher getting that child interested in learning is low.

One of Delany's four goals for the renewed NCAA/potential split division is to put these kinds of athletes in an academic gray-shirt their freshman year to get up to university standards by their sophomore year. In other words, freshman year will be remedial. I think that is a great idea since those athletes have the opportunity to stay 5 years. One year of remedial is not going to hurt their graduation track and may actually help them to learn instead of being manipulated through classes for 4 years.

(01-08-2014 10:32 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Cheating and paying players is one thing. In the 70's I saw a lot of $50 and $100 handshakes at Carmichael Auditorium, the Greensboro Coliseum, and in Reynolds.

I attended school with the dumbest kid to ever don a UNC uniform - Kevin Madden. I also attended school with the most immature kid to don an NC State uniform Chris Washburn. Madden was dumb, Wash had the maturity of a 12 year old.

I've seen first hand special treatment for ball players while at Duke, but even then, the player was forced to recite in front of the professor and forced to talk out the problems and forced to attempt to reason to get his C.

What UNC has done goes beyond the pale. It has the potential to hurt joint research with State and Duke. We don't need the NIH and the FEDs questioning research at UNC because of what's been allowed to go on at the undergraduate level. This is what's crazy, the athletic faction at UNC was allowed to get out of control. Now the money folks and academic folks have to fight to fix it.

But... UNC represents the zenith of all academic excellence!

Those grade-inflating cheating scumbags; I hate em.

It's an interesting article....you want to know why they are at UNC?

Because UNC took it to another level...and then they bragged about it.

Its one thing to enroll questionable kids into your program...many schools do that.

Obviously when that happens, curriculum has to be found where those kids can get through....many schools do that.

ONLY AT UNC has their been proof of unauthorized grade changes, forgeries, and classes not even taking place that kept athletes eligible.

ONLY AT UNC has their been proof of no supervision for 20 years of a specific professor that had most if not all of the UNC basketball and football players in his classes. He never received a review....ever. Only at UNC.

Maybe its happened at other places, but at UNC the overwhelming evidence supports that this was done ON PURPOSE.

So the story is at the root of the issue, but UNC is still under investigation for how MUCH they did for those kids. And then bragged about their 100% graduation rate and recruited to the point that kids would get a degree from UNC if they came there.

(01-08-2014 11:08 AM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  One of Delany's four goals for the renewed NCAA/potential split division is to put these kinds of athletes in an academic gray-shirt their freshman year to get up to university standards by their sophomore year. In other words, freshman year will be remedial. I think that is a great idea since those athletes have the opportunity to stay 5 years. One year of remedial is not going to hurt their graduation track and may actually help them to learn instead of being manipulated through classes for 4 years.

For the kids that can't read?

(01-07-2014 11:34 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 10:32 PM)ValleyBoy Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 10:06 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 09:34 PM)bullet Wrote:  These athletes really should be in a JC, not barely kept eligible in a Division I school.

JC? The problem starts long before that. It goes all the way down the ladder. A student who can't read should never be given a high school diploma, for that matter should never be promoted to high school at all until they've learned to read well.

You want more disclosure? Let's start that further down the line, too. If they're going to disclose college athletes who can't read above 8th-grade level, let's also disclose the names of the high schools and principals who gave these kids high school diplomas.

While you are making your list of names to include start with everyone one in Washington that set the rules for our public education system.

Pffft. A lot of mistakes are made in Washington, but no one in Washington is making local schools give decent grades to high school athletes who can't or won't do their schoolwork. That's on principals, teachers, coaches, and parents, who are all part of the reasons why star athletes are given the grades needed to stay eligible for sports even if those passing grades aren't deserved. Those are the reasons athletes who can't read well end up with high school diplomas and then tell their college academic advisors they can't read.

You couldn't be more correct Wedge. However, some high schools are really nothing but diploma mills and the parents, coaches, teachers, principals, and even the local school boards and superintendents/adminstrators know it!! However, there is a refusal to change the culture, so nothing changes. IMO, tenure is something that needs to be reviewed across the country. The state of Georgia has abolished tenure, but the state of Alabama has not. I'm sure other states have abolished it, and others have kept it, but I'm beginning to think that tenure is not as good for the systems as it was originally intended to be. However, Washington, DC, deserves some credit on this as well for turning a blind eye to the problem, IMO. Washington can do a lot more against the NEA (the teacher's union) than an individual state can.

(01-08-2014 12:48 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 12:34 AM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 10:06 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(01-07-2014 09:34 PM)bullet Wrote:  These athletes really should be in a JC, not barely kept eligible in a Division I school.

JC? The problem starts long before that. It goes all the way down the ladder. A student who can't read should never be given a high school diploma, for that matter should never be promoted to high school at all until they've learned to read well.

Problem with that is that a lot of kids simply would never graduate from high school. For many of the kids in that situation, holding them back and failing them isn't going to increase their ability to learn appropriate reading and writing, math, science, history, etc.

Americans don't want to deal with it, but we would be far better served by a European system that has two tracks: professional & skilled. We do need to teach every child to read and write with some degree of competency as that goes hand in hand with other social responsibilities, and we need to teach every child addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, along with world history and U.S. history, but every child should not have to take algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics, biology, or advanced grammar, poetry, or logic, etc.

There are plenty of diagnostics before the 6th grade is completed that would be indicative of the likelihood of the degree of success with either track of academic pursuit. At that point the choice of track should belong to the child's parents, if not the child. At the college level the further development of either track could then be pursued. The guarantee should be for the basics of education as a baseline with the burden of development beyond that on the individual.

While I wasn't suggesting an alternative, I was simply pointing out that "holding a student back" won't solve the problem for many of these students, perhaps even the vast majority.

UNC is the unfortunate poster child for a widespread problem. FOIA has introduced a new level of transparency that will make this type of information much more accessible. Schools will have to start changing the way they treat the student piece of student-athlete but it's a hard balance to strike.

I wouldn't be surprised if schools start highlighting some of the more well-rounded members of their football and basketball programs.