The UNC fake class investigation and the ‘myth’ of the student-athlete

Anyone else think we take sports too seriously?

The numbers alone are surprising. At the University of North Carolina, more than 3,100 students, many of whom were athletes, took phantom classes in a “shadow curriculum,” netting high marks despite the fact that the classes never met and there wasn’t any work beyond a final paper no one read. The scheme ran for years, between 1993 and 2011, and the athletes “didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake … they didn’t have to meet with professors … they didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material.”