Thousands Of UNC Students Tangled In Academic Fraud Scandal

An investigation released Wednesday shows that 3,100 students at UNC Chapel Hill were involved in academic fraud that spanned nearly two decades. Four employees have been fired and several others are under investigation.

UNC chancellor Carol Folt would not name the fired employees at a press conference Wednesday. She says the blame lies squarely with the university.

“As I look at this, the main failure that I see is not in the students but was in our failure because we did not treat them well. Assumptions were made about them and we didn't provide the proper services, so that is really where I'm going to focus it and where the attention has to be,” says Folt.

This comes after an independent report found that students enrolled in classes they didn't have to show up for, and received artificially inflated grades for research papers. Nearly half of them were athletes.

The report called them “paper classes” that ran from 1993 to 2011.  It was in the former African and Afro-American Studies department and involved UNC employee Deborah Crowder. The report by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein also shows that an academic program meant to support athletes called Academic Support Program for Student Athletes (ASPSA) was directly named in the scandal.

“We found evidence that some of the counselors at ASPSA actually would suggest (two of them), to Deborah Crowder what grades she should give to student athletes in her class," says Wainstein. "We had one football counselor who would provide a list of the football players who would be taking one of her paper classes, along with the grades associated with each name that the counselor thought that student would need to remain eligible.”

UNC Chapel Hill officials say they have implemented policies and procedures to prevent something like this from happening again.

They say they have filed a copy of the report with the NCAA. Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham says the university is in the middle of a review with the organization and it's too early to tell if any additional sanctions will be taken.