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Costs For UNC Academic Scandal Climbing

(Credit: Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The University of North Carolina has spent more than $5 million since 2015 on costs connected to an academic scandal - money that goes beyond attorney fees.

Lawsuits by former athletes, multiple open records requests and of course court fees have all contributed to the growing cost of the scandal. With the latest figures in, the number has now topped $16 million since the investigation was made public five years ago.

The problems included independent study courses misidentified as lecture classes that students didn't attend. More than 3,000 students were affected between 1993 and 2011. Athletes across numerous sports represented about half those enrollments.

The investigation has led to five serious charges from the NCAA. UNC is due to respond soon, but the university says that's on hold while it works with the NCAA on a new schedule.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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