North Carolina is in the midst of academic fraud scandal involving bogus, paper-classes, that according to an independent investigation involved 3,100 student-athletes during an 18-year span.
To help manage the fallout, the university hired Edelman, a public relations firm, several months ago. And it has been a costly hire, according to a report on Thursday from the News & Observer, as the university is set to pay the firm $1.65 million.
From Dan Kane of the News & Observer:
Wainstein released his findings from his investigation on Oct. 22. The report stated that student-athletes, many of them football and basketball players, were steered into classes that required no attendance, only a paper at the end of the semester.
This scandal remerged over the summer when Rashad McCants, a member of the North Carolina team that won the 2005 national championship, told Outside the Lines in June that he took four African and African-American Studies courses, a department that was revealed to have many of these paper classes, in the second semester of his junior year in order to remain academically eligible.
A UNC spokersperson told Kane that the public relation will not be covered by state funds or tuition dollars.