The Chronicle of Higher Education posts a sordid story tracing the decades-long grade fixing scandal that has engulfed college sports, revealing a problem, that reaches from the players and their representatives all the way to the teachers, coaches, and college administrators.
A man going by the name “Mr. White” in the Chronicle story says that he helped students in a myriad of ways to stay qualified for their sport. He hired people to do their homework, gave teacher test keys to students so that they could cheat at tests, and even worked with professors to slip shill test-takers into classrooms for student athletes or got professors to allow athletes to skip tests despite receiving passing grades.
For all this, “Mr. White” said he was paid thousands for his services by students, parents, sports reps, coaches, and administrators alike.
Mr. White concentrated on basketball students, but helped college students who played in sports such as football, baseball, golf, and others.
The records Mr. White shared with The Chronicle show that “his fraud reached the highest levels. A handful of the players listed in his notes were drafted to play in the NBA. At least two are the children of former professional athletes. One is a back-up catcher in Major League Baseball.”
White says he made $40,000 one year for his grade fixing services, but also explained away his illicit activity. He told The Chronicle that if he hadn’t done what he did, hundreds of students over his 20-year grade fixing career would have lost their scholarships and never graduated from college.
The Chronicle did some follow up on some of the students who Mr. White said were his clients and found that many of them corroborated Mr. White’s story, even as they wanted to remain anonymous.
This grade-fixing scandal has engulfed all of college sports and investigations have been launched in numerous schools across the nation.
Cheating scandals have been coming out for years. In January, the University of North Carolina admitted that it had created fake classes to give athletes a grade boost. And just last year an ex-Oklahoma player laid out to CBS Sports how athletes cheat and how coaches, professors, and college administrators help them do so.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter: @warnerthuston. Email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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