The truth is beginning to take hold: the scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill is about corruption of its academic administration, not merely its athletic program.

In a Raleigh News & Observer article, a UNC business professor (and business man) castigates those who dismiss the problem as mere athletics:

Maybe I am missing something, but where was the athletic scandal? Were teams shaving points? Were tennis players intentionally making bad line calls? Were soccer players taking performance-enhancing drugs? Were athletes competing on the field who were academically ineligible?

He argues that business-like governance is needed at the school and, in fact, praises UNC for making the dean of UNC’s business school, James Dean, its provost.

Going further, economist and syndicated columnist Walter Williams writes that universities like UNC benefit by creating “academic slums, where weak students can ‘succeed.’”

Athletics departments benefit from the millions of dollars the student-athletes earn for them, but in addition, the whole university thrives, except for the students who were accepted even though they can’t do the academic work.

Stronger academic departments benefit because they do not have to compromise their standards and bear the burden of having to deal with weak students. Then there’s that feather in the diversity hat upon which university administrators are fixated.

The story is different for the students who aren’t ready for college. “How cruel is it for UNC to admit students who have little chance of academically competing on the same basis as its other students?” Williams asks.

Pretty cruel.