Lew, the UNC cheating scandal also highlights the proliferation of unconventional college programs, majors, and departments. Note that all the “paper” courses at UNC were in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (recently renamed African, African American, and Diaspora Studies). Universities with D-I sports have long steered football and basketball players, who generally have much lower academic qualifications than other students, into undemanding majors like Afro-American Studies, Education, Communications, and the like. It’s no coincidence that athletic scandals rarely involve professors and courses in physics, art history, or economics. I agree that big-time college sports programs should be spun off into for-profit entities — they could license the brand from the sponsoring college — but getting rid of the soft departments would help too.

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