David N. Camaione: Guilty UNC should pay price

Reading the Aug. 3 articles about the worst academic fraud case in college sports history and finding that those independent study classes are not subject to NCAA jurisdiction nor are the problems those classes created demonstrated to me that a cover-up may be in the making.

If UNC receives or gives itself little or no serious penalty after 18 years of bogus courses enrolling around 3,000 students, half of whom were athletes, with many having received good grades for doing little or no substantive work, the academic integrity of this great university has reached a new low.

Let’s not spin it. There is little doubt these courses were created to provide an opportunity for athletes to pad their GPAs to stay eligible.

I spent 42 years in higher education, and I know well how a courses and curriculum committee functions in creating courses. Establishing proper policies, procedures and guidelines for each and every course is required. Quizzes, mid-term and final exams, written or oral, and/or papers are the normal means of evaluation.

From what I have read, these procedures were limited or nonexistent. If the NCAA does little or nothing, UNC needs to fall on the sword.

This story was originally published August 8, 2016 at 4:31 PM with the headline "David N. Camaione: Guilty UNC should pay price."