HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UNC’s arrogance over academic scandal has tainted the school’s once-great image.

In 2011, the newspaper obtained a transcript of UNC football star Marvin Austin showing a B-plus grade in a senior level African studies class he took before his freshman year began. UNC officials were at a loss to explain how he got into a high-level course before his first football practice.

Reporters and investigators began digging, and the results were appalling.

From 1993 through 2011, about 3,100 UNC students – nearly half of whom were athletes – took African studies classes that proved to be bogus. Classes generally did not meet; homework was not assigned.

Most required little work – a simple term paper at the end of the semester often sufficed.

UNC hired attorney Kenneth Wainstein to investigate, and he found that about 40 percent of those term papers were at least in part plagiarized, yet were accorded an average grade of A-minus.

Many of the term papers were graded by Deborah Crowder, a former academic administrative assistant and an avid Tar Heels fan. She gave A and B grades, Wainstein found, regardless of the quality of the work. Never mind that she was not a faculty member and was not supposed to grade papers.

These “fake” courses helped athletes remain eligible, Wainstein wrote, including members of UNC’s 2005 national championship basketball team.

The News & Observer later reported that five members of that team took a combined 52 fake courses. Rashad McCants, a starter on that team, has said (his claims are disputed by former teammates) that tutors wrote term papers for athletes.

Here’s what an academic counselor told Wainstein about fake classes: Athletes “didn’t go to class. They didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake. They didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material.” . . .I’d feel some sympathy for UNC officials if they had earnestly tried to get to the bottom of all this. But instead of opening up, they lawyered up and stonewalled investigators. They blamed a false “media narrative” for forcing the NCAA to investigate and have distanced themselves from the Wainstein report

The school already has spent $18 million on the academic scandal, mostly in legal fees.

And yet any effort by the legislature to bring some adult supervision to this clown show is treated as some sort of fascism.