Newly-released emails in UNC fraud investigation appear to support UNC MBB player Rashad McCants' claims of fraud and tutors doing work for players

In an October 22, 2014 CNN article, UNC men's basketball player Rashad McCants alleged that UNC's fraudulent "paper classes" helped him stay eligible to play basketball at UNC.  In particular, he indicated that, during the Spring 2005 semester, the semester when UNC won the NCAA basketball title, all four of his "classes" were of the paper variety and he made the Dean's List, despite doing no work and attending no classes. 

UNC responded to his allegations by trotting out various members of that year's basketball team to respond and "refute" McCants' allegations.  Thus far, however, McCants is the only one who has released his transcripts, and data from the Wainstein investigation indicates that various members of the UNC's FB, MBB, and other teams were enrolled in these paper classes.  The issue discussed here is not whether these courses were fraudulent, because UNC has admitted as much.  Rather, the question is whether athletic department employees committed fraud by doing the academic work athletes should have been doing on their own.

McCants refused to speak to the NCAA regarding his claims that tutors wrote papers and did work for athletes, a decision that contributed to skepticism of his allegations. Just recently, in December 2016, UNC released another 17.8GB of emails and documents from the Wainstein investigation, contained in 19 files.  Among these files are emails between UNC Academic Support for Student Athletes (ASPSA, a part of the athletic department) tutors and learning specialists.  Among these emails, I discovered several that appear to directly buttress McCants' claims that tutors and academic counselors did work for athletes. 

In one email to Cynthia Reynolds from tutor "Susy", who appears to be tutor Susy Dirr, who was also referenced in the Wainstein Report (Cadwalader Report @ 78), Dirr discusses the fact that she wrote outlines for AFAM fake paper classes.

(NOTE: By all accounts that I have seen, Ms. Dirr, who passed away in 2008 from cystic fibrosis, bore no fault in this matter. In fact, Wainstein cited her August 7, 2007 letter decrying the deplorable behavior certain athletes exhibited toward Prof. Bwana Mutima.  As shown  below, Ms. Dirr's work was done at the behest of her ASPSA supervisors.)

The two classes referenced, AFRI 266 and AFRI 520 were both listed as paper classes during the Fall 2006 semester, the period referenced in the email, in the Wainstein Report exhibits.  In fact, AFRI 266 papers were investigated by a trio of experts (Edmond J. Keller, Ph.D, Derek Malone-France, Ph.D, and Imani Perry, Ph.D, in their report titled Expert Academic Evaluation of Retrieved Paper Set African and African American Studies Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Spring 2005-Spring 2011 (See Cadwalader Report Exhibits @ 144).  The experts found that:

The fact that an academic tutor under the umbrella of the athletic department wrote the outline for the paper required for AFRI 266 would tend to explain the existence of plagiarism and "academic abnormalities" in the course's paper among athletes.  For the fall 2006 semester, Wainstein documents show that 17 football players, 4 men's basketball players, 3 women's basketball players, and 23 athletes in other sports were enrolled in the AFRI 266 "paper class." Overall, athletes made up 47 out of the 95 enrollments in the "class" that semester. (Cadwalader Exhibits @ 101-102).

Subsequent emails to Cynthia Reynolds, who declined to speak with Wainstein and the Cadwalader investigation team, from the tutor, confirms that outlines were sent to athletes. 

The work of writing outlines for athletes' papers appears to have been done by tutor Susy Dirr at the request of ASPSA's Cynthia Reynolds, as seen below:

The practice of sending the outlines directly to athletes was not practiced for all classes.  For example, for the paper class AFAM 697, referenced in the email below, for the Summer I and II semesters in 2007, the decision was made to give the outline to the mentors as a guide.

The fact that tutors did work for athletes is also supported by an additional document from UNC's files, showing ASPSA's Beth Bridger's name on an AFAM paper.

As a side note, the reason why the author of the emails appears to be clearly UNC football team tutor Susy Dirr is because a) other emails from her appear in the same section of the UNC document release, b) the time period corresponds to her tenure there, and c) other emails where her full name appears appear very similar to those referenced above.  For example, see below:

These emails appear in UNC's December release, document PRR7-15 beginning on page 1058 approximately.  

These documents are relevant for several reasons.  First, they show in detail how the eligibility curriculum that exists to sustain the NCAA's "collegiate model" works to the detriment of education.  Second, they underscore the importance of continuing to dig for the facts, despite some notable athletic department sympathizers among the UNC faculty and administration suggesting otherwise.  Third, these documents appear to undermine UNC's latest claims that the athletic department staff did not engage in any behavior contrary to NCAA bylaws. 

Title IX Analysis - Athletic Aid Grant Equality Among NCAA DI Power 5 Conference Schools

Since I have been working with the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA) database for other things, I thought I'd take a look at which schools offer the most equal scholarship aid per athlete for men and women.  To do so, I divided the total athlete aid for men and women by the unduplicated count of men and women athletes at each school in every year.  I then calculated the ratio of female aid/athlete to male aid/athlete.  Finally, I sorted them by year and female/male aid per athlete ratio.

One surprising fact was that Baylor has consistently ranked the worst in the last few years.  In 2014, Baylor female athletes received $0.55 in aid/athlete for every $1 in aid/athlete given men.

Schools like Stanford and UNC-Chapel Hill (who are incidentally playing against each other in today's Sun Bowl) appear to have a relatively good record of aid equality.  The table below shows the 2014-2015 data for school whose ratio were 1.1 or less.  The full table for all years can be obtained by clicking the link at the end of this post.

If you want to see the entire PDF file for all P5 schools, click here.  It is sorted by year and ratio of female aid/athlete to male aid/athlete.  The interpretation of the ratio is how many dollars in aid per athlete were given to women for every $1 in aid per athlete given to men at each school in each year.

As always, criticisms/suggestions/questions are welcome.

What the NCAA's letter to UNC Means for Its Fraud Case and the Implications for Ongoing Antitrust Issues

After the publication of the communications between the NCAA and UNC regarding the Committee on Infractions (COI) procedural hearing scheduled for October 28, 2016, a number of questions have sprung up, specifically, the questions a) what does this mean?, b) is the NCAA going to "do the right thing" and punish UNC, c) why such a strongly-worded letter from the NCAA after what can be best described as almost a "get out of jail free" card in the form of the Amended Notice of Allegations?  When attempting to answer these questions, one needs to keep in mind that the UNC fraud case is only part of a larger consideration, namely the ongoing antitrust challenge to the NCAA's restraint on trade in the form of the "amateur model."  The UNC case has enormous implications for these cases.  So, keeping this in mind, I'll try to answer these questions from an economic viewpoint.

Let's tackle the questions sequentially, starting with "Will the NCAA do the right thing?"  The answer to this question is complicated by the incongruity between doing the right thing as an economic matter versus doing the right thing ethically or morally.  When people ask this question, there is some sort of moral code implied, namely that cheating is anathema as an ethical matter (i.e., an honor code exists) and should be punished as to disincentivize those who would engage in such behavior in the future.  This may be true, but it's also irrelevant, because such ethical constraints are peripheral to the NCAA's mission.  Simply put, if anything, the NCAA has shown little, if any, interest in "ethical" or "moral" considerations.  If the NCAA punishes UNC it won't be for ethical reasons. It will be because UNC has placed the entire existence of the NCAA cartel at risk and threatened at least one of the two pillars remaining in its antitrust defense.

The NCAA is a cartel, or, if you prefer its expert's euphemism in the O'Bannon case, a "joint venture".  The semantic difference is irrelevant, as what matters is function over form.  As with any cartel, NCAA  polices the behavior of its members, the schools, to ensure no cheating occurs.  But what is cheating?  Cheating in a price-fixing cartel, for example, means that one member lowers its price from the fixed supra-competitive price and thus takes sales from everyone.  Or, in OPEC's case, cheating means that one member decides to increase output beyond the cartel's set production limits.  In both cases, consumers benefit from the lower prices or increased output, but the cartel suffers as a whole.  If one member cheats, then others have the incentive to cheat and match the price/output, and eventually the cartel falls apart.

But, this brings us to the major difference between the normal cheating in a price-fixing cartel and the type of cheating in which UNC engaged.  If a cartel member, in say, OPEC or another price-fixing cartel, cheats by lowering its prices or increasing its output, the consumer benefits, as mentioned above.  But, academic fraud benefits nobody other than the athletic department of the cheating member, because the athletic department's teams gain an unfair advantage over other competitors.  While athletes at other schools have to attend class (a requirement specified in the Regents decision), the cheating member of the cartel removes this "obligation" from its athletes, giving them more time to spend on sport.  The "student-athletes", under the NCAA's academic-athletic integration justification don't benefit, because their education suffers.  Thus, if the egregious behavior at UNC becomes ubiquitous, it spells the end of the NCAA.

Why?

To answer this question, let's look at what both the Ninth Circuit and the District Court found in O'Bannon.  The Plaintiffs successfully argued that the NCAA's amateurism restraint is subject to the Rule of Reason and has anticompetitive effects.  The NCAA responded with 4 "pro-competitive justifications."  The District Court rejected two outright, but retained two: a) some benefit from the "core value of amateurism", and b) the integration of academics and athletics.  If these two pillars fall, there is no defense for the NCAA's restraint on amateurism (ergo, antitrust injury exists), meaning that college athletes will finally be paid for their work, and the NCAA will be potentially liable for significant sums in damages.  Long story short, there is a lot of money at stake, and the UNC case has placed this all at risk by undermining the "integration of athletics and academics" argument.

The NCAA argued that athletes are better off because they get an education, which means better outcomes.  In my upcoming article in the Antitrust Bulletin journal, I discuss the NCAA's defenses and their lack of merit in more detail, but suffice it to say, the UNC case and the accompanying documents produced, eviscerate the NCAA's already tenuous (at best) factual basis for its position.  If UNC escapes any substantive punishment, the NCAA's defense of the athletic/academic model will be exposed for the Potemkin village it already is.  The UNC case is the albatross around the NCAA's neck, and the NCAA needs a way to remove it without substantially injuring itself in the process.

So, if the NCAA punishes UNC it won't be because it cares about the academic or the overall well-being of the students.  The NCAA is a commercial venture, and, as such, its concern is profit-maximization.  UNC's long-standing fraud has threatened the cash flow that the cartel enjoys.  That is really the wrongdoing as far as the NCAA is concerned, not defrauding students of an education.

So, now what does this all mean and why the strongly-worded letter from the NCAA, which looks so out of place when juxtaposed against the ANOA? I am not privy to the inner workings of this investigation, and I claim no "insider knowledge."  I can only draw conclusions based on observed behavior.

The NCAA has been attempting to thread the needle and obtain its best possible outcome,  At the end of this, the NCAA would like to say that a) it has no jurisdiction over academic quality, but b) the system it uses to ensure students get an education works and there is an academic benefit to the "student-athletes". The best way to achieve that end in the UNC case, is a limited notice of allegations that avoids academic entanglements, but one that also results in a stern punishment from the COI.  That is, as I see it, why the NCAA's ANOA amounted to largely a wrist-slap, but the NCAA also argues that the COI should consider the Wainstein Report and the original NOA.  The COI is not bound by the limits of the ANOA, thus its punishment can extend beyond their scope.  The limits of the ANOA serve only to buttress the NCAA's "hands off academics" position, while the COI's greater leeway serves to shore up the NCAA's "integration of academics and athletics" antitrust defense.  Simply put, if UNC escapes any substantive punishment in this case, to borrow from Yeats, "things fall apart."  I believe the NCAA cartel will fall apart eventually, anyway, but a UNC escape may accelerate that outcome significantly.

That said, for those more interested in this topic:

The first 2017 issue of the Antitrust Bulletin, of which I am the guest editor, is a special symposium on the antitrust issues facing the NCAA.  We will have contributions from some truly outstanding authors and academics, including Roger Blair, Rodney Fort, Rich Sheehan, Drake Group members Andy Zimbalist and Jayma Meyer, Matt Mitten, Andy Schwarz, Keith Leffler, Cristian Santesteban, Joe Whitman, Keith Trahan, and an introduction by Patrick Hruby.  My own article in this issue will have a significant discussion of the implications of the UNC fraud case for the NCAA's antitrust cases as well as a calculation of the damages athletes have incurred as a result of the NCAA's restraint on trade.

As always, comments, disagreements, suggestions are welcome.

Did UNC Break Federal Law? UNC Academic Fraud and Implications for Pell Grant Awards

by Ted Tatos

Yesterday, I discussed the evidence that UNC violated its own academic policy regarding the limits on independent studies as a follow-up to Dan Kane's article in the News and Observer.  (for more details on this issue, Mr. Kane's article is highly recommended.) The implications for violating this policy reach beyond the academic fraud issues and could impact the validity of UNC's Pell Grant awards.

Why?  Enrollment status is used to determine federal student aid awards.  A student enrolled half-time only receives half of the award given to a student enrolled full-time.  The determination is made based on credits towards the degree in which the student is enrolled.

Courses students took in excess of the 12-hour total and 6-hour per semester total did not count toward the degree.  The Federal Student Aid Handbook states:

If a student is enrolled in courses that do not count toward his degree, they cannot be used to determine enrollment status unless they are noncredit or remedial courses as described in the sidebar. This means you cannot award the student aid he would otherwise not receive for classes that do not count toward his degree or certificate.

FSA Handbook, 2004-2005 at Page 1-10.  (the language is virtually the same across years.  I used 2004-2005 because it corresponds to the example I use below.  An archive of FSA Handbooks can be found here.)

The implication of this policy is this:  If the credits counted for the degree, they did so in apparent violation of UNC's own policy limiting independent study credits to 12 hours total and 6 per semester.  If the credits did not count toward the degree, then a Pell Grant violation may have occurred, if the amount of award, when given, exceeded the amount commensurate with the number of courses taken that counted toward the degree.

For example, in Spring 2005, Rashad McCants, a UNC MBB player, took 4 independent studies for 12 credits.  According to his own statements, he did not attend class, did little or no work, and yet still made the Dean's List.   That may represent academic fraud, but, if Mr. McCants was receiving Federal Student Aid in Spring 2005, it would also represent a potential violation of federal law on UNC's part.  Mr. McCants had already taken at least 15 credits' worth of independent studies.  So, by UNC policy, none of the 12 credits he took in Spring 2005 should have counted toward the degree, meaning he could not receive federal student aid.  

Whether he did or not, I don't know.  I am simply using Mr. McCants' case as an example.  But there is clear evidence in the documents that many athletes received federal student aid and that athletes exceeded the University limits on independent study credits.  

While this issue also impacts the current NCAA investigation of UNC, the latest findings raise the question of whether UNC broke federal law by including courses that should not have counted toward students' degrees to determine aid eligibility.  

And if UNC did it, how widespread is the problem?  Are federal dollars, designed to assist students in obtaining an education, actually being used instead to ensure athlete eligibility to continue funding athletic department coffers?  

Did UNC Mislead SACS and NCAA?

Making Sense of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's "Independent Studies" Policy

Documents Indicate that UNC Again Misled its Accreditation Body, SACS

by Ted Tatos @BlueDevilicious

There has been considerable additional attention as of late on the limit on independent study courses at UNC, in large part because of award-winning News & Observer reporter Dan Kane's latest article. The key issue is whether athletes were given the "benefit" of exceeding this limit, thus rendering them ineligible by UNC's own standards.  The NCAA levied this specific allegation in its Notice of Allegations (NOA) as Allegation 1b, stating:

"Additionally, from the 2006 fall semester and continuing through the 2011 summer semester, the institution provided impermissible extra benefits similar to those articulated above and allowed 10 student-athletes to exceed the limit of independent study credits countable toward graduation. Under the institution's policy, credit hours for independent study courses did not count toward a degree after a student exhausted the institutional 12-hour limitation. By failing to count the anomalous AFRI/AFAM courses as independent study courses, and including these courses as applicable toward graduation, the institution impermissibly allowed 10 student-athletes to exceed the 12-hour limitation. [NCAA Bylaw 16.11.2.1 (2006-07 through 2010-11)]"

NCAA Notice of Allegations at 2.

The NCAA's allegation is based on the information UNC provided to its accreditation body, SACS.  UNC stated that:

This section regarding “Independent Studies for Credit” was first incorporated in the Undergraduate Bulletin in the 2010-2011 edition. A 12-hour limit on departmental independent study credits was initially included in the 2006-2007 Bulletin as an addition to the existing policy on Special Studies for Credit.” Until Fall 2006 there was no defined limit on the number of independent study courses that could be applied toward an undergraduate degree.

UNC Respose to SACS at 100.

Is UNC's statement true?  No, not according to its own documents.

The image below comes from UNC's 1981-1982 Undergraduate Bulletin.  The document clearly indicates that "A student may earn thirty semester hours of credit toward a degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill through independent study courses, provided they are taken prior to the senior year.  This document indicates that UNC had a policy limiting the number of independent study courses that could be taken for credit toward a degree at least a quarter century before UNC told SACS that the policy began.

But there is more to this story. Despite the factual inaccuracy of UNC's claim to SACS, technically, these are not the "independent studies" at issue in the UNC AFAM fake class scandal.  The "independent study" policy referenced above, and which continued for decades, referred to "correspondence courses", which students could take up to 13 months to complete.  Further, if a student currently attending classes at UNC wanted to take such a course, he/she had to obtain the written permission of the dean. Unless deans at UNC signed off on thousands of enrollments in fake classes, these are not the courses at issue.

The courses at issue are referred to a Special Studies for Credit.

Beginning in 1991-1992, UNC adopted "Special Studies for Credit" policy, as evidenced by the email below.  This email was signed by Karen (likely indicating Karen Moon, UNC's News Director and part of its Media Relations team) and was apparently directed toward Dan Kane.  The email is sent from an individual at public relations firm Edelman to UNC assistant athletic director, Vince Ille.

Though I was unable to find the 1991-1992 bulletin, the 1997 bulletin states that:

This is the policy that limited the number of undergraduate independent study credits, and it was in place over a decade before the 2006 date UNC claimed to its accreditation body. After 2006, the Special Studies for Credit section was modified to include the term "independent study", though the substance was the same.  The limit of 12 hours total and no more than 6 per semester remained the same.

Note that the document refers to "twelve hours of graded special studies and/or independent study credit may be counted toward graduation...".  The evidence from the documents UNC produced as part of the Wainstein investigation confirms that this is the policy that was relied upon, and that independent studies were referred to as "special studies for credit."

In addition, March 2003 UNC report cited by Dan Kane, confirms the existence of the twelve-hour independent study rule.  This also confirms that the independent study rules were referenced in the Special Studies for Credit.  As noted above, this policy existed since 1991-1992.

Why is this important?  First, the documents in this case directly contradict what UNC told its accreditation body, SACS.  The evidence indicates that the independent study policy, listed under "special studies for credit" began 15 years before the 2006 date UNC told SACS.  

This contradiction has implications for the NCAA's allegations against UNC, as it substantially increases the number of athletes affected by Allegation 1b.  For example, athletes such as Rashad McCants, who played on UNC's 2005 NCAA champion men's basketball team, would be in violation of the independent study policy even before the spring 2005 semester, since he had already taken at least 15 credits' worth of such classes.  In the Spring 2005 semester, Rashad McCants took an additional four independent study courses. Since none counted for credit, Mr. McCants was effectively not even enrolled as a student in any classes that counted toward graduation, making him ineligible to play. 

All NCAA eligibility and punishments aside, the most stunning revelation here is that UNC appears to have directly misled its accreditation body, yet again.  Previously, UNC claimed only two people were involved in the academic fraud, Deborah Crowder and Julius Nyang'oro.  The subsequent investigation by Kenneth Wainstein revealed that the fraud was considerably more widespread. Among those found to have been involved, UNC's own Faculty Chair and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics, Jan Boxill, was subsequently asked to resign for "unethical acts."