By MARK ESPOSITO
Taking On King Football Is Tough Sledding For UNC Prof. Mary Willingham
Professor Mary Willingham is an audacious academic as defined by our times. Aghast by having to teach basic reading skills (like sounding out “Wis-con-sin”) to athletes in the University of North Carolina’s revenue producing sports programs –read that as football and basketball — the scholar decided to look into how UNC evaluates the college readiness of those baby-blue clad hulks on the hardwood and gridiron.
Boy, did she get an eyeful from those student grade sheets and then she got an even bigger earful from her employer. Preliminary figures found that 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. Prof. Willingham even encountered athletes who could not read or write at all when she worked as an academic tutor to the athletic department.
“Until we acknowledge the problem, and fix it, many of our athletes, specifically men’s basketball and football players are getting nothing in exchange for their special talents, ” Willingham wrote to CNN. She also forwarded a copy of her work onto UNC Provost James W. Dean, Jr. That little tidbit of info landed on Dean’s desk like bird droppings and got the same whitewash treatment.
It also sent the school into panic mode and they promptly trotted out UNC head basketball coach, Roy Williams, who rebutted about every jot and tittle of the research. Academic problems in athletics? No way, said the coach who won an NCAA national title and is usually in the hunt for one every year.
“It’s totally unfair,” Williams said. “I’m really proud of the kids we’ve brought in here. … We haven’t brought anybody in like that. We’ve had one senior since I’ve been here that did not graduate. Anybody can make any statement they want to make but that is not fair. The University of North Carolina doesn’t do that. The University of North Carolina doesn’t stand for that.”
Added to that fusillade, UNC President Thomas Ross authorized a statement saying the university didn’t believe a word of it:
“We do not believe that claim and find it patently unfair to the many student-athletes who have worked hard in the classroom and on the court and represented our University with distinction,” the statement said. “Our students have earned their place at Carolina and we respect what they bring to the University both academically and athletically.”
Yep, unfair to student athletes to suggest that UNC cooks the books to insure gridiron and basketball greatness while ignoring their academic work unless it drops below the NCAA eligibility levels — and we’re talking limbo low levels. You can’t read? Well, you can dunk can’t you?
I guess Williams and Ross missed that interview in the Raleigh News & Observer where former UNC football star Michael McAdoo said school academic advisors guided him to four of the department’s no-show classes in what he called “a scam.” McAdoo is now academically ineligible to return to UNC. Imagine that?
And if all that wasn’t enough, UNC has now taken the Kafkaesque “ethical approach” and squashed any sense of academic freedom by shutting down Willingham’s research which she began in 2008. Yep, using student data that contains the names of the students violates the Human Research Policy or so the university now claims after knowing about it for 5 years. (Folks do move slow down south, you know.) No unapproved two-legged guinea pigs at UNC. You must first receive permission from the Medical School’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The same board who approves things like clinical trials for new drugs at UNC Hospitals now must decide if looking as Johnny’s grades and reading scores poses the same health risk as exposure to radioactive isotopes . Oh, the dilemma!
Willingham is undeterred, vowing to go through the application process to make sure that reviewing that computer data won’t compromise Johnny’s health or emotional well-being. (Any bets on the over/under timeframe for that approval?) Whether Johnny’s reading at a fourth grade level at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities is a detriment to his emotional well-being will not be reviewed by the IRB. That’s out of their jurisdiction, I suppose.
Lest you wonder about how seriously UNC is taking Willingham’s research you should know that Chancellor Carol Folt emailed an open letter to university students, faculty and employees saying she takes Willingham’s allegations “very seriously.” But of course, the university has been –try as they might -“unable to reconcile these claims with either our own facts or with the data currently being cited as the source for the claims.”
Folt, of course, is the new Chancellor ever since the old one (Holden Thorp) was run out-of-the-gym for the most recent athlete cheating scandal at UNC. “Thorp left last year amid the fallout of an NCAA investigation into the football program in 2010 that eventually led to the discovery of fraud in an academic department with classes featuring significant athlete enrollments. The irregularities ranged from no-show classes to unauthorized grade changes stretching back to 1997 and has even led to the recent indictment of the retired department chairman who was paid to teach a lecture course that didn’t meet and was instead treated as an independent study requiring a research paper.”
Rumor has it that Folt ended her open letter with, “And I want to see every one of you at tonight’s home basketball game against Wake Forest,” but that could not be independently verified.
Source: Huffington Post
~Mark Esposito
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Flowers For Socrates 
When you state the unsayable…. You expose problems… You expose problems…. You have to deal with them…. If you have to deal with them…. Then some heads will roll…. If heads roll…. You lose talented players…. You lose talented players… You lose donations…. You lose donations… Then…. Well… The cycle is vicious…. It feeds on itself….
I’ll take Rices approach to academic excellence….
Anonymously Yours
Violates their policy on human research, eh?
A fine illustration that ridiculous excuses are not just confined to the world of politics and business.
Wow! I am sure the medical school, as well as the psychology and sociology departments will be dismayed to get this news.
If it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit, and you saw it coming out of a bull’s ass, it probably is bullshit.
Excellent article Mark. It always amazes me when an institution of learning cannot be honest that they are using these athletes for money and way too many of them are not getting a real college education. We can’t put it all on the colleges because many of these top athletes are allowed to “pass” through high school because of their athletic prowess.
Raff,
My question academics aside…. Who too the sat or act for them…..
Took
AY’s comment about the SAT and ACT sort of broadens the corruption, doesn’t it? Is there any facet of American life that hasn’t gone to sh*t?
“Is there any facet of American life that hasn’t gone to sh*t?”
I’m assuming that was a rhetorical question at this point, pdm.
AY,
Excellent question!
I think the real question is why do so many colleges let themselves function as a minor league for the NBA and NFL? If you look at the numbers the “they make the school money” answer just doesn’t fly.
I mean, if all the college does is get them ready to try out for the NFL, why not just offer degrees in Football? At least that’s honest.
Hey Gyges, long time no see!
I was reading the article you linked and noticed it referring to the current state of higher education as reminiscent of the housing or internet bubbles and it reminded me of a conversation I had with an economist after a talk she gave. The subject of bubbles was briefly touched on in her talk, and I asked her what she thought the next bubble would be—without hesitation she answered “education”. Ever since then, I’ve examined the idea and tried to poke holes in it… and failed. The price of an education is going up and the value of that education is going down—how long will it be before most students will never realize the cost of their education in increased wages? (Especially if the quality of that education is in doubt because of issues like this.) I wasn’t aware that big time athletics was an exacerbating factor in this, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
As a former UNC post-doc, I should also say that while the actions of the administration in this case are extremely disappointing, in my experience Professor Willingham is representative of the quality and integrity of the faculty rather than an exception.
Slarti,
After reading your and Gyges’ posts I went to a link I had booked marked awhile ago. You might want to take a look at it:
“This presentation by Education News gives you a more in-depth look at the economic state of America’s higher education system. The data that economists have gathered—from skyrocketing tuition costs to the astonishing size of student loan debt—will tell you everything you need to know about this growing economic concern. Higher education may not be in a state of crisis yet, but it is an issue that deserves a closer look. Watch the video, read the infographics, and then decide for yourself: is higher education the next big bubble?”
http://www.educationnews.org/higher-education-bubble/
also:
“the growth in student-loan debt (which now exceeds credit-card or auto-loan debt) are unsustainable” – Glen Reynolds NY Post
http://nypost.com/2012/05/29/not-worth-the-debt/
Ever since then, I’ve examined the idea and tried to poke holes in it… and failed. The price of an education is going up and the value of that education is going down—how long will it be before most students will never realize the cost of their education in increased wages?
I think that rather than a bubble bursting, it’ll slowly deflate and having a degree from a non-community-college will start to become even more of a class filter for certain types of jobs. Much like unpaid internships function now.
Gyges,
You might be right—I don’t know how the bubble will lose its air, just that it is inevitable—but I do think the more we ignore the problem, the harder the landing will be.
Blouise,
I checked out the infographics and I think they’re good (infographics are one of my favorite forms of propaganda 😉 ), but they have a couple of bad statistics—as in lies, damned lies and—which is a pet peeve of mine. For example, they note that the endowment of Harvard declined from $37 billion to $26 billion in a single year. Of course, 2008 was hardly a typical year for the endowment… I don’t like these sorts of bad notes—they offer a point which can be legitimately criticized while doing nothing to strengthen the argument.
I also like to see more information about how things have changed over time—for instance, the graphic shows average student debt for 4 different years, but this doesn’t give you a good idea about how it’s growing. A graph in this HuffPo article shows the growth of debt since 1993—a steady increase with a plateau during the Bush years. This suggests to me that the problem is more stagnating incomes and decreasing opportunities than runaway costs.
I thought that the comparison of Simmons and Holy Cross was particularly compelling and the takeaways were very good. All-in-all, I think it is something that all college-age students (and their parents) should see—I’m planning on sending the link to all of my college-age nieces and nephews.
Thanks.
Slarti,
I would agree with you on the 2008 facts but given the source, I think they expect one to take that with a grain of salt and like it or not, downturns are a factor at any given time and can skew the graphs.
What I particularly liked was the simplicity of the presentation … something young adults and their parents can easily understand and thus helpful in determining a course of action when deciding on both an institution and degree program.
P.S.
It is cold here … really cold and an unusual amount of snow given the cold temperatures. Did you see the news reports on that semi pile-up in Indiana? They are attributing it to white-out conditions.
Are you still coming down with the flu?
please, you think you’re cold there? we’re suppose to be in the high 30’s tonight.
i had to close the windows and break out a space heater.
brrr
Blouise,
I got on the zinc early and was pretty much asymptomatic again within a day. Now I’m just freezing my ass off—highs in the teens and lows below zero for the next week…
As for the factoid about the Harvard endowment—it’s a total non sequitur. Sure, endowments took a hit in 2008 and I’m sure that impacted financial aid at private schools in particular, but I’m also sure that endowments have substantially recovered since and that declining endowments aren’t really one of the reasons for increased student loan debt.
Slarti,
The thing is … if the bubble bursts or even, as Gyges suggested, deflates, then what happens to endowments? It’s a thought to ponder.
Aren’t the temperatures unreal?! We will also be in the negatives all next week. Tex and I will be out running all our errands this weekend because 20 degrees is like summer. The rest of the week we will hunker down and sip brandy by the fireplace.
The endowments are just investments owned by universities, so I shouldn’t think anything will happen to them, although the value of the university itself (as a business) could be seriously affected.
As for the temperatures, check out this xkcd. I hadn’t realized this, but it is absolutely true.
Slarti,
Sigh …
😉
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