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Investigation Reveals Cheating Scandal At UNC

University of North Carolina President Tom Ross, left, and Chancellor Carol Folt listen during a special joint meeting of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. The board gathered to discuss the results of an independent investigation of past academic irregularities. (Gerry Broome/AP)
University of North Carolina President Tom Ross, left, and Chancellor Carol Folt listen during a special joint meeting of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. The board gathered to discuss the results of an independent investigation of past academic irregularities. (Gerry Broome/AP)

A new investigation has uncovered massive academic fraud at the University of North Carolina. The report released yesterday shows more than 3,000 students, about half of them athletes, enrolled in classes they didn’t have to show up for and received artificially inflated grades in what an investigator called a “shadow curriculum.”

Here & Now’s sports analyst Mike Pesca told host Robin Young that “the institutionalization of the scandal is all but unprecedented.”

UNC’s football program has already been sanctioned by the NCAA for other violations.

When describing the scope of the fraud, Pesca said it “essentially captured an entire department. This African and Afro-American studies program just became a very efficient system to give any student-athlete, which is really just an athlete, the grade they wanted.”

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