Arne Duncan, a former Harvard basketball player who was the Secretary of Education in the Obama administration and is now a member of the Knight Commission on college athletics, weighed in on the University of North Carolina’s long running academic scandal Monday, calling for the NCAA to change a rule that allows an institution to determine the legitimacy of its courses.
Duncan’s comments, made in Washington, D.C., came in the wake of the NCAA Committee on Infractions sparring the Tar Heels sanctions
“The NCAA should not be handcuffed in its authority to consider independent assessments of academic fraud,” he said. His announcement came after a Knight Commission meeting in which NCAA president Mark Emmert, who said “only a small portion of Americans” believe the Committee on Infractions held UNC accountable for 16 years of classes that were created and graded by a secretary and had no instruction.
If the member schools want change, they will have to vote for it. Most are reluctant to allow an outside organization like the NCAA determine what constitutes academic fraud.
The Committee on Infractions ruled that it could not sanction UNC over the classes in large part because the school claimed them to be legitimate, even though they were below its standards, and were offered to all students, not just athletes. Emmert said he felt the Infractions Committee felt “hamstrung” by the academic fraud rule but questioned whether the NCAA should have more latitude over academic matters, or allow accrediting commissions develop better ways to punish schools that commit academic fraud.
The 2014 rule is a huge loophole, but it is legal. If the NCAA member schools want academic reform they will have to vote to change the rules. When push comes to shove, many schools are reluctant to allow NCAA to subjectively determine what constitutes academic fraud.
Currently, accrediting commissions can punish schools for fraudulent classes, but their options are limited to probation or pulling accreditation. “That, Emmert said, is “a nuclear bomb” because it cuts off federal funding. UNC’s accrediting commission, the Southern Association of Colleges commission, found the university violated the standards for academic integrity and control of college athletics and put it on probation for a year.
