NCAA releases a list of non-public schools that have engaged in fraud
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has released a list of non-public, non-traditional schools that its investigation concludes have engaged in abuse and academic fraud. The NCAA will no longer accept the transcripts of athletes who attend these schools, which will probably prevent the athletes from obtaining athletic scholarships. According to NCAA vice president Kevin Lennon, this latest move against these so-called diploma mills is an outgrowth of the organization's long-standing concern about the academic credentials of incoming freshman student-athletes from non-traditional schools. However, the NCAA acknowledges problems with its own clearinghouse, which is charged with reviewing transcripts and certifying the eligibility of incoming athletes. As a result, it is in the process of making changes. Meanwhile, Don Jackson, an attorney who represents some of the schools under investigation, contends that most of the schools are affiliated with churches, making any NCAA intrusion a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. "They're not an accreditation agency, and they don't have the technical expertise to do it," he says. Mr. Lennon responds, "We believe there are absolute abuses going on, and we believe that in some instances there was fraud going on in terms of the credentials given to some of the high school students. As a result of that, we've collected some initial information that leads us to say there are some schools we're no longer going to accept courses from." The NCAA asked more than 40 schools to submit information regarding their academic standards. While acknowledging that most prep and non-traditional schools have satisfactory standards, Mr. Lennon admitted that the number of schools with questionable credentials was greater than his organization anticipated. The NCAA released a list containing the names of 15 schools that are no longer approved. As a result, those schools have been marked as inactive in the clearinghouse system. Most of the schools failed to receive NCAA approval because they failed to respond to the organization's requests for information. The NCAA expects to release another list within the next few weeks that may contain the names of Lutheran Christian Academy in Pennsylvania and Genesis One in Mississippi, schools that were the subject of stories in the
New York Times and the
Washington Post that sparked the NCAA investigation. A number of schools have been notified and are being given the opportunity to respond to specific questions. The NCAA warns that failure to provide a response will result in the school being invalidated for use in the initial-eligibility process. Four of the schools featured in the
Washington Post's series of articles were placed on the inactive list.
USA TodayBy Staff
[Link to full story]FoxSports.com[Link to full story]Washington PostBy Mark Schlabach
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