U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes • Hacker News Board

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#81

Post by iends » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 5:05 AM UTC

rrrx3 wrote: post #16

evanriley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, its probably happening at most universities. I went to N.C. State and would be surprised if it WASN'T happening there too. I assume any school which gets a amount of money from their sports program would have something similar to UNC.

I also went to NC State, and I'm pretty sure that there's no department dedicated to this type of institutional corruption.

When I was at NCSU a college soccer player was on the roster in my "Learn Proofs for Math Majors" (MA225) course. He and a tutored showed up intermittently to the class. After some measurable time after the drop date he stopped showing up. I've always wondered if they let him drop it really late after the drop date or something shady was going on. Probably a late drop since it was soccer and not Football/Basketball. =)

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#82

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 5:10 AM UTC

sehr wrote: post #37

dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colleges are academic institutions. If you want to be semi-pro athlete rather than a student-athlete, you should join a semi-pro team rather than an academic institution.

There are no semi pro football teams. Simplifying it all down to that is naive and ignorant, the athletes are using the system that's been put in place for them to succeed. Ignoring the NCAA route in favor of anything else at this point isn't just career suicide, it's career abortion.

> There are no semi pro football teams.

Yes, there are.

True, they aren't a good way to get into the NFL, because the NFL prefer to recruit from college teams.

But the question then shouldn't be "why are college athletes expected to meet the academic sstandards that go with being in college" but "why do major professional sports teams in certain sports prefer to recruit from colleges rather than lesser professional leagues in the same sport"?

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#83

Post by Steuard » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 5:20 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #53

jordanpg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reading books and writing papers. So you'd argue that football is an intellectual pursuit in the same sense that math, physics, philosophy, or history is? That study of the nuts and bolts of the game is worthy of the attention of our finest minds (as a discipline unto itself)? The "reading books and writing papers" you mention is a severe and tragic distortion of why universities exist. It has little to do with the…

It's at least on par with, literature, music, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, art, or any other "soft" subjects lacking of direct impact on people's lives. It's held to a higher standard than economics, but has less impact. As to math I would argue it's more meaningful than say topology, but less than other branches.

If you're listing topology as "less meaningful", I'm guessing you haven't spent much time studying topics in physics that have been developed since the 1970s or so. Topology turns out to be a pretty big deal.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#84

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 5:30 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #35

rrrx3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that they're being exploited. Choose to go to class or not, they are not being paid anything remotely close to the value that these schools get from them in terms of team gear sales, ad revenue, tv time, increased enrollment, etc etc etc. This is especially true when they're turning in BS papers for crap degrees that can't and won't serve them once they leave school. A minuscule few make it pro. The re…

Well, they are getting compensation in terms of free tuition, room and board, etc... these things do have significant value. If they complete school, they get to walk away with a degree without any debt. That's not trivial. However , the athletes are only able to actualize this compensation if they can freely choose their majors, are able to take the classes they want, and actually earn their education. By creating a…

>>Well, they are getting compensation in terms of free tuition, room and board, etc... these things do have significant value. If they complete school, they get to walk away with a degree without any debt. That's not trivial.

The actual number comes down to around $25,000/year for public schools and $35,000/year for private schools. This is out-of-state tuition combined with living expenses and school supplies. However, it goes down significantly once the student establishes in-state residency.

So basically, these college athletes are making working class wages while learning nothing of significant value. A few of them get into the major leagues upon graduation and the rest struggle with unemployment and underemployment for years. Being involved in college athletics costs them more in the long run than the paltry sum of expenses they get to waive over their college career.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#85

Post by Chevalier » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 6:10 AM UTC

kofejnik wrote: post #65

Chevalier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree with you that the rowing/badminton/chess teams probably don't get special treatment. But you don't seem to question the value of "top quality athletic programs." Why do we want them to exist in the first place? The ostensible point of university is to develop a student's mind to solve problems -- preferably in the real world, though humanities programs insist that paying $50k+/year to read poetry is jus…

Very few people would be happy studying lambda calculus in their basement, most humans like being around other humans. Socialization is why colleges matter, not useless humanities degrees.

And that's why, in functional countries, socialization is a natural consequence of urban design. You don't need a horrifically expensive excuse to drive to some random location to meet people -- you bump into them naturally as pedestrians and cyclists. University towns are the closest the US gets to Copenhagen, due to absurd subsidies of automobile traffic.

But I agree with you about lambda calculus. Let's definitely keep higher education for STEM fields, where rigorous and difficult subjects would benefit from such educations. At the same time, let's be real. Most university students today are wasting their time getting worthless degrees, for no reason but that credential inflation has turned BAs/BSs into high school diplomas.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#86

Post by sehr » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 6:15 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #82

sehr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no semi pro football teams. Simplifying it all down to that is naive and ignorant, the athletes are using the system that's been put in place for them to succeed. Ignoring the NCAA route in favor of anything else at this point isn't just career suicide, it's career abortion.

> There are no semi pro football teams. Yes, there are. True, they aren't a good way to get into the NFL, because the NFL prefer to recruit from college teams. But the question then shouldn't be "why are college athletes expected to meet the academic sstandards that go with being in college" but "why do major professional sports teams in certain sports prefer to recruit from colleges rather than lesser professional l…

That's exactly my point, in the spirit of semi pro baseball & soccer leagues, semi pro football does not exist.

And great, that's a completely different argument. One that I think we really should be having soon, though I'm not sure if anything will be changed.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#87

Post by JackFr » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 6:18 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #6

csdrane wrote: post #2

Pretty shocking but I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's probably happening at a lot of other universities with big sports programs. UNC just happened to get caught.

While I don't believe UNC is necessarilly the only offender, this is not a case of 'everyones doing it'. There is a spectrum of practices which scholarship athletes typically use. Some are simple, practical and pretty much above reproach -- taking the fewest credits allowable during the season; taking academically rigorous course over the summer. Some start to get questionable -- at what point does intensive tutoring become the tutor actually doing the work. And then are no show classes and fake grades.

It's possible to be a scholarship athlete and get a real academic degree. I've seen people do it first hand. But it's hard -- you need to start with a decent academic background, and then work your ass off and most likely the social aspect of your college time will suffer.

That being said, even without the best academic background its possible to legitimately graduate if there is institutional support for it. The student might not have the most rigorous undergraduate course work, but they will have earned a degree equivalent to many non-athletes at the school. But for this to happen there needs to be institutional support both inside and outside the athletic department.

What's disturbing to me about UNC, is not just that they knowingly and persistently cheated, but that there behavior was purely and most basely exploitative -- they weren't even pretending to educate these students.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#88

Post by cafard » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 10:09 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #57

mbreese wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they are getting compensation in terms of free tuition, room and board, etc... these things do have significant value. If they complete school, they get to walk away with a degree without any debt. That's not trivial. However , the athletes are only able to actualize this compensation if they can freely choose their majors, are able to take the classes they want, and actually earn their education. By creating a…

> Well, they are getting compensation in terms of free tuition, room and board, etc... these things do have significant value. Compare and contrast with the money an 18-21 year old second team player at Real Madrid or Barcelona makes and get back to me on the "significant value". Especially when the athletes are being funneled through second-rate degrees to free up their time for sport.

A fairer comparison might be to the pay received in US minor league baseball. These can go as high as $90 thousand. But you can also play at the highest level of minor league ball, AAA, and get $2150 per month.

Having said that, I agree with you on the whole. They are being paid in kind: in room and board that they could get at home, and in tuition that doesn't seem to amount to much. I think that baseball's structure of minor leagues and Canadian hockey's junior hockey offer a better deal to the young athlete.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#89

Post by pXMzR2A » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 11:02 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #5

Why is every semi-pro athlete expected to get a decent GPA in order to play on a university's football team? It's a completely different skillset. I don't blame players for ditching classes to pursue their dreams. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's the same drive as an entrepreneur's: to test yourself, to excel. It's just a different context. They are adults. If, as adults, they choose not to pursue academic studies,…

> get a decent GPA

A 2.0 is not a decent grade nor GPA, it means you're failing at most of your classes and will probably be expelled.

Btw, your argument is "leave the school and pursue sports." I just found that interesting, that's all.

Re: U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

#90

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Oct 23, 2014, 11:20 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #44

The NCAA is basically a joke when it comes to enforcing their rules on academic standards. This was made clear a couple years ago, when they hit Caltech with big penalties for lax academic standards, while basically ignoring things like the UNC scandal. Caltech was fact was technically in violation, because it allows students to spend the first three weeks of each term taking classes without registering for them. The…

>However, since they are not registered for a full academic load during that three weeks, they count as part-time students, not full-time students, and so are ineligible for NCAA sports. Caltech's new director of athletics noticed this, stopped the violations, and reported his department to the NCAA.

That's bloody ridiculous. Add-drop period is practiced at almost all real universities.