NCAA Sanctions Baylor Football For Academic Integrity Violations

Plus, TV in Ohio covers cheating surge. Plus, Florida International University clams up.

Issue 47

Baylor Football Gets NCAA Probation for Academic Integrity Violations

The football program at Baylor University has been in hot water for some time and for several, quite serious reasons. This week, the NCAA issued its report and punishments, sanctioning the program not for the gross misconduct that made headlines, but for how it handled an academic integrity violation and the composition of one of its student booster groups.

The short version of the cheating issue is that a football player was caught submitting plagiarized work and suspended. And despite the school’s honor code limiting the time to appeal to five days, the player appealed the decision to the school’s President four months after the deadline. Nonetheless, the President overturned the suspension, placing the student on a version of an improvement plan that “required 100 percent academic honesty.”

Not two months after the reversal, the same student was caught cheating on a class quiz. But, according to the NCAA:

the professor was going to exercise his discretion not to charge the student-athlete with a violation of the honor code

That’s convenient.

But the real problem, the NCAA found, was that:

Although both the associate AD for student services and the director of athletics knew the conditions the president had placed on [the] student-athlete reinstatement, they did not notify the president that the student-athlete had failed to meet those conditions.

So, nothing happened. In fact, the report says the student:

suffered no consequences, remained eligible to compete and played in seven more football games that season.

This academic integrity issue, as well as how the school used a student group in recruiting, and a limited failure to cooperate with the investigation, cost the football team four years of probation, reductions in future recruiting activity and other penalties.

This is an unusual case because the NCAA is involved. But it nonetheless illustrates that how a school chooses to deal with academic misconduct matters. What you do is what you care about.

Florida International University Goes Quiet About Cheating

When CBS News ran a national story about American college students hiring essay writers in Kenya to do their work (see Issue 43), they inadvertently showed a paid cheater logged into the learning management system at FIU - Florida International University.

I asked the school for comment. And for a minute, it looked as though they may. An Assistant Vice President wrote back saying they had not seen the CBS story and,

It’s not clear to me what is the alleged FIU involvement.

After I replied that the course names and numbers on the Kenyan’s laptop were from the FIU course catalogue and that a browser tab was visibly open to the FIU server - showing the FIU logo - nothing. I followed up four times. Silence.

That’s not surprising. It’s pretty common for American schools to deny cheating, to refuse to talk about it. But it is a shame.

Ohio TV Station Reports on Cheating

The CBS affiliate in Columbus, OH recently reported on academic misconduct, saying succinctly:

Cheating in college rises during the pandemic

And

Professors say students took advantage of taking tests from their dorm rooms with notes or searching their computer for answers without anyone looking over them.

The report also correctly touches on the big jump in misconduct cases at Ohio State University (See Issue 19 and Issue 41). It interviews leaders at Ohio State as well as leaders in academic integrity such as Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant of the University of California, San Diego and Dr. George Watson, of Marshall University. Watson wrote a recent study on cheating (see Issue 23) and told the Ohio station,

30% [of students] said they’ve cheated more since the pandemic has started

And

In our study, less than 2% said they were ever caught cheating in any way

The story also quotes Dr. Ashley Norris, Chief Academic and Compliance Officer of proctoring provider ProctorU saying,

There has been consistent and compelling evidence that cheating has significantly increased over the past year due to online teaching and online testing

Significantly, the reporting with the story also says that,

Columbus State Community College also reported higher cases of academic misconduct year over year. During the 2019-20 academic year, Columbus State reported 206 cases compared to 441 during the 2020-21 academic year.

Capital University said it tracks academic conduct but when 10TV requested to see the numbers it claims, “as a private institution, we would not release that information,” said Denise Russell Director of Communications.

Good for Ohio State and Columbus State for their openness.

“The Cheat Sheet” won’t be published this coming Thursday. We will be back next Tuesday.

When we are back, “The Cheat Sheet” will cover cheating data from the University of Virginia. Plus, we’ll review that “conversation” editors at Inside Higher Ed plan to have on academic integrity - the one that’s sponsored by Honor Lock, a proctoring company, while Inside Higher Ed is actively promoting Course Hero.

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