Allegations of Academic Cheating under Barnes and UT's Response

NBHorn7 said:
How is a student in college at Texas, still taking remedial math?
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Why is such a class even offered at Texas? If students are not academically ready to do freshman level work when they are admitted, they should be at a junior college learning to do the work before transferring to Texas or any other four year college.
 
Not defending what may have happened, but it's naive to ask why are certain type classes being offered to some athletes. And not just at Texas, of course.
 
Before making any judgments, I suggest you await the whole story. Most of what has been written came from a disgruntled former employee, who, by all accounts, did not do an outstanding job.

This is reminiscent of the aftermath of the firing of Jeff Sandefer.
 
BabHorn said:
Why is such a class even offered at Texas? If students are not academically ready to do freshman level work when they are admitted, they should be at a junior college learning to do the work before transferring to Texas or any other four year college.
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If the plan is to make Texas the Rice of the Big XII, I would agree. The issue is how the hours count. If they do not count and the athlete can handle the load there is no issue. I would have issues if the hours counted towards any degree.

And yes everyone does it [even Rice has a separate school especially for lower achievers (including most athletes) that awards a degree]. (WARNING - don't bash me - I have to many friends who received degrees this way from Rice.)
 
They offer these type of classes because the people taking them have been hired to run around with inflatable balls for our own amusement. They are there to play sports, try to make it in the pros, have 98% fail to make a buck, and end up working on a loading dock.

Which isn't a bad thing - heavy things need people to move them around too. It just a crock to attempt to call it anything except paid amusement, with hired athletes

Every school does this. If you go back to my "Fraud at UNC" post, I wondered what Texas did to keep human tackling dummies enrolled, and the pitiful Longhorn Scholars Program had the tarp pulled off it.

At the least, every school has a series of grade school level courses to keep athletes with high enough grades to stay enrolled - the old “rocks for jocks” class. Most have designed programs like the Scholars Program, which is a joke of a name, since it’s at a non-college level. The worst ones like UNC just have fake classes, projects, cheating, and TA’s doing the work and signing the jock’s name.

We’ll see how Texas fits in this spectrum. And yes, it will be some disgruntled, fired employee who blows the whistle on this. Duh. You think someone who was still working at the school would get himself fired by exposing things?
 
It's laughable to think Barnes or any coach has anything to do with any of this. The athletic department has a academic staff that handles athlete academic matters independent of the coaches. The exception may be Charlie Strong who has taken a hands on approach to try to get his football players to take school seriously and succeed. I'll also note, golden steer is correct to point to the UNC thread on in the stands. This matter has been discussed in some detail and the remedial program UT is NOT limited to athletes. It is university wide though obviously not open to all students. Anyway, it's not just a basketball scandal and no coach set up these classes or programs.
 
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So let's review.

We point the finger at other schools and conferences for low academic standards, saying that athletes get into these schools, but couldn't get into Texas.

Once they get into Texas, we can give them what amounts to high school level courses or less, to keep them eligible, because everybody does it.

If we want to become the Rice of the Big 12, we could stop doing it, but of course, Rice does this too.

I thought we were the "Texas" of the Big 12, with higher academic standards. Nebraska I thought, took great exception, to our higher standards, part of why they left, the partial qualifiers thing. I guess it really doesn't matter, if you can get them qualified, without much trouble.

These type classes are not limited to athletes only, "it is university wide," but not open to all students. Texas is hard to get into, but if you do, there is a remedial program, to take? Is this the polar opposite of "Plan II?" They should call this "Plan 0."

I know athletes have special tutors and all kinds of advantages, that the rest of the student body doesn't have.

Yes, they have a different curriculum and I know that, I'm not naive at all, but many of the statements above are confusing to say the least and pretty contradictory.

It sounds kind of familiar, "it's not cheating if everybody does it."

If all this is fine, then we should really drop the "student athlete" moniker.

We should also tone down the criticism of other school's too, because "everybody does it."

 
A major change will come to college athletics soon. Between the academic scandals, players wanting to get paid, etc. something big will happen. I just hope that my favorite sport (college football) changes for the better and is not ruined because of it.
 
It's win-win for the NCAA to go after academic impropriety. Everyone on every side of the argument says "yeah... get them cheaters!" when it comes to can't-fail courses or grad assistants writing term papers.

I'm surprised J'Covan Brown could even walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone get into Texas. I know there was a big hullabaloo about his NCAA clearinghouse issues, and I thought something was amiss when that story went away.
 
This really sounds like a non-issue to me. So the tutors did some of the work? Yeah, so did my tutors and so did most other tutors anyone I knew ever went to. Tutors "helped" write papers - well yes, they generally help with that sort of thing.

These type classes are not limited to athletes only, "it is university wide," but not open to all students. Texas is hard to get into, but if you do, there is a remedial program, to take? Is this the polar opposite of "Plan II?" They should call this "Plan 0."
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Agreed, that's a bit off in the first place.
 
NBHorn7 said:
Is this the polar opposite of "Plan II?" They should call this "Plan 0."
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When I was in Plan II many years ago, we used to call the rest of UT "Plan I" and the athletic department "Plan 0". I haven't heard the phrase in about 2 decades. Glad to see it revived.
 
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