Dimensiones del problema de los cultivos ilícitos

As part of our investigation, we were tasked with determining whether and how the paper classes affected student GPAs. This required us to team up with Chapel Hill Registrar Christopher Derickson and to conduct a statistical analysis of student records to determine the impact that the inflated paper class grades had on student GPAs.

a. Impact Analysis Methodology

We considered two separate measures for this impact analysis. The first, and most simple, was a simple calculation of the average percentage increase in GPA caused by the grades student received in the AFAM paper classes. After careful research and calculations by Registrar Derickson, we determined that on average a three credit-hour AFAM paper class raised a student’s GPA by approximately .03 points. That is a meaningful increase, especially when it is considered that many students took multiple AFAM paper classes.

The second, and more complicated, measure we employed was a determination of the impact the AFAM grades had on a student’s ability to maintain a certain threshold GPA. The threshold we used for that analysis was the 2.0 GPA mark, which is the standard threshold for graduation at Chapel Hill and other schools.

We considered whether to also conduct an impact analysis using NCAA and/or Chapel Hill athletic eligibility standards as a threshold for student-athletes, but ultimately decided that that analysis was not practically feasible for our purposes. Those eligibility standards have changed over the period that the paper classes existed,114 _{and they also change throughout the course of a student-}

athlete’s college career.115 _{In addition, GPA is just one of two factors of eligibility, the other being a}

student’s progress toward his or her degree. As such, we determined that the traditional 2.0 threshold was the most feasible standard by which to measure the impact of the paper classes.

Once we determined our threshold, we then identified every student who was ever enrolled in one of the 188 identified paper classes116 _{and isolated each student’s cumulative GPA at the end}

of the semester in which he or she took the paper class. In order to determine the impact that paper class had on the student’s GPA that semester, we then took the three-credit grade that was awarded for the paper class and excluded it from that end-of-semester GPA. The result was what we call the “recalculated GPA,” which reflects that student’s GPA without the benefit (and it was almost always a benefit) of the paper class grade. We then compared that recalculated GPA number for each paper class student to the 2.0 threshold to identify those students for whom the paper class grade made the difference between exceeding or not exceeding 2.0 for that particular semester. Because the effect of a grade continues to impact GPA for the rest of a student’s college career, we then

114 _{In 2003, the NCAA enacted a complex eligibility scheme that required students meet certain benchmarks}

in progressing towards a degree in their declared major in order to remain eligible. We understand that Chapel Hill has also changed its academic eligibility requirements, including by introducing a probationary status.

115 _{Eligibility requirements are based on a student’s year in school.}

analyzed whether that AFAM grade was the margin between an above or below-2.0 GPA in a student’s future semesters. We conducted this analysis for every student who ever took a paper class, and for those students who took multiple paper classes we calculated the combined impact that the paper class grades had on their GPAs.

Before laying out the results, it should be noted that this methodology has an inherent limitation – it cannot be used to conclude that a student would necessarily have ended up with a lower GPA if he did not take the paper class. It is quite possible that if the AFAM paper class were not available, the student would have taken another easy class that awarded him or her an equally high grade. In fact, that is quite likely given how many students admitted that they were looking specifically for an easy-grading class when they selected the paper class. Therefore, while we can use this analysis to calculate the GPA enhancement caused by the paper class grades, we cannot go beyond that and conclude that the student would not have gotten that GPA enhancement but for the paper class. With this limitation in mind, the following lays out our impact analysis findings.

b. Impact Analysis Findings

A total of 2,152 individual students who enrolled in the paper classes were included in this impact analysis. Of that number, 329 students (including 169 student-athletes) had at least one semester in which the grade they received in their paper class either pushed or kept their GPA above 2.0. In other words, for at least one semester in their college career, each of those students had an actual cumulative GPA above a 2.0 but a recalculated GPA (excluding the paper class grade(s)) below a 2.0. This number includes 123 football players, 15 men’s basketball players, eight women’s basketball players, and 26 Olympic sport athletes. Of that number, we identified 81 students who earned degrees from Chapel Hill whose recalculated final GPA excluding the grade(s) from their paper class or classes was less than the 2.0 required to graduate.

In addition to calculating the number of students whose GPAs were so impacted for one semester, we also performed an analysis to determine the impact across all of the paper class students’ college careers. To do this, we first identified every student semester that was ever affected by the grade that a student received from a paper grade –either from that semester or a previous semester. That total population ended up being approximately 10,018 student semesters. Out of that population, we isolated those student semesters where the paper class grade had the effect of raising the student’s GPA for that semester. We then compared that population of semesters against the 2.0 GPA threshold and calculated the percentage of those semesters where that rise in GPA attributable to the paper class either maintained or pushed the student’s GPA over 2.0.

In reporting these results, we distinguished between non-athlete students and student- athletes. In general, we found that the paper class grades had a disproportionately higher impact on student-athlete GPAs across semesters than on non-athlete student GPAs. While we found that a paper class grade kept or pushed non-athlete GPAs above 2.0 for only 7% of the impacted semesters, it did so for student-athletes in 17% of their semesters.

In terms of different sports, we found that the paper class grades had the greatest impact on men’s football, a lesser impact on men’s and women’s basketball, and relatively little impact on Olympic sport athletes. For football players, the paper class grade allowed the player to reach or maintain a 2.0 in 25% of the impacted semesters; for men’s basketball it did so in 14% of the

impacted semesters; in women’s basketball it was 9% of the semesters; and for Olympic sports the number was only 4%.

B. Assessment of University Employee Knowledge or Involvement in the Paper Classes