MAJOR EDUCATIONAL STORY – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:   It is rare for a major American university to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of the most prestigious public institutions in the country.  Now its accreditation is being threatened by corruption within its walls.  From Fox: 

RALEIGH, N.C – An accreditation agency important to colleges receiving federal funds put the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on probation Thursday for a year over its academic fraud scandal.

The board of Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' Commission on Colleges stopped short of imposing the harshest penalty, which would have blocked the country's oldest public university from receiving federal funds including student loan proceeds.

At a meeting in Portsmouth, Virginia, the group determined that UNC-CH failed to comply with seven key operating principles for member universities, among them: integrity, program content, control of intercollegiate athletics and academic support services.

The practical effect of the sanction is that "they just have to send us more documentation to show their compliance with seven of these principles," commission President Belle Wheelan said.

The agency previously opted against punishing UNC-CH, but acted after learning last fall of the scope of fake classes and artificially high grades in one academic department. A report revealed that the fake classes in the African studies department had gone on between 1993 and 2011. About half the 3,100 students who took the classes were athletes.

"Most of the students here aren't athletes and a lot of them go to class and work hard in class," senior psychology student Merrick Osborne said as he crossed the Chapel Hill campus Thursday. "I think the biggest concern I would have is the probation would affect people who don't really have anything to do with the incidents."

COMMENT:  There are so many things wrong with our universities – from academic corruption, to left-wing takeovers, to speech codes, to political correctness, to phony departments set up to keep this or that group happy. 

So why do we see so little coverage of these things in the mainstream media?  Because the most dubious relationship in journalism today is the relationship between journalists and universities.  We will be exploring that.

June 12, 2015