mathmajors & slydevl, get a load of this

In the last calendar year:
UNC is 26-36
The last 8 ACC victories have come against Clemson (4 times), FSU (3 times) and UVa (1 time)
They have lost the last 12 games vs the Big 4 NC schools

And imagine this going on...
Players' struggle in class masked Universities listing fewer 'exceptions'
By Barbara Barrett and Chip Alexander, Staff Writers, Raleigh News & Observer
February 14, 2003

This morning, the leaders of North Carolina's university system will examine a document on intercollegiate athletics that shows six "academic exceptions" among N.C. State University's freshman class and none at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Those numbers don't begin to paint the true picture. Nearly 10 years ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stopped reporting exceptions -- students who don't meet a school's usual admission standard but gain entry because of a special talent. The university simply did away with the category after lousy publicity on the number of exceptions, especially in football. The university now accepts 20 to 30 such students each year.

Now NCSU is admitting more athletes who would be considered borderline academically. Facing an increase in the number of athletes who would be labeled exceptions, the university changed its policy last summer. Leaders now are considering another change, which would -- as Chapel Hill did -- lose the term "exception" altogether.

Today's report to the UNC Board of Governors will list five exceptions on NCSU's football and men's basketball teams, according to a draft copy of the report. There was another exception in women's soccer.

Still, had the university not quietly made its policy change, the number would have been significantly higher: 14, according to a memo obtained by The News & Observer through the state's public records law. NCSU officials said in interviews later that they recall that all 14 were athletes.

UNC-Chapel Hill is accepting far more such borderline students. But the university now calls them "committee cases."

"There might be in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 students like that every year," said Jerry Lucido, UNC-CH's admissions director. All are athletes, he said.

Universities and colleges often admit students who don't meet academic requirements as "exceptions" because of particular talents they bring to the school. Those exceptions often are athletes.

In Chapel Hill, admissions officials review borderline students' entire files to make decisions.

"We pore over transcripts of the individuals," Lucido said. "We discuss character. We discuss coursework. Often times, we work with coaches to beef up curriculums during a [potential student-athlete's] senior year. And frankly, we take most of them."

But reporting the number of exceptions, on a document to be made public, can be embarrassing for universities. "How many articles would be written if we went from zero-zero-zero-one to, say, 16?" said Lee Fowler, NCSU's athletics director, explaining the policy change at his school.

According to an early draft of today's report, NCSU will show more exceptions than any other UNC system school in the combined sports of football and men's basketball. Appalachian State University has four, UNC-Asheville, two, and UNC-Greensboro, one. Everyone else has none.

Thomas Conway, N.C. State's interim vice provost for enrollment management and services, decided in January to begin shopping another change to campus groups that would eliminate the term "exception," as UNC-CH did. He spoke with deans Thursday morning and is scheduled to talk with faculty senators March 3.

"I think UNC did it for the right reason," Conway said. "And I think we ought to consider their logic."

The work to obscure the number of struggling student-athletes worries some academics who recall problems in the 1980s with how universities ran their athletics programs.

In 1983, under the late Jim Valvano, the Wolfpack men's basketball team won a national championship. The desire to remain competitive nationally resulted in the admission of some athletes with low academic qualifications. Valvano stepped down in 1990 amid allegations of academic abuses in the program and in the wake of NCAA and UNC system investigations.

Art Padilla, a professor of business management at NCSU, is concerned that if institutions such as NCSU and UNC have changed their definitions, no one will know whether student-athletes are meeting standards.

"We need to have, and the UNC governing board should continue to insist upon, consistent and verifiable information from year to year that provides this public information," Padilla said. "I think any efforts to hide or mislead by playing with definitions are wrongheaded and ultimately will harm the university as well as its students, faculty and certainly its administrators."

 

I thought this was a common practice in colleges. Or maybe the problem is how they reported it.

 

Special talent? Is this some sort of affirmative action? Then every NC high school senior should be allowed admission to the UNC system school of their choice. If they can't make the grade, they're gone from there.

Let's call it what it is, 'academic exception' is a term the UNC system administration doesn't want to see used. Don't try to hide it.