The long anticipated story by The Ann Arbor News uncovering a scandal in Michigan's athletic program...well, it talks tough at the beginning, but reading the entire article (no short task) gives a different impression.
I'm not going to go into details--and you can read the article yourself--but it sounds like what's going on is that--surprise!--Michigan's student-athletes aren't quite as good in school as the general student body, and there's a particular professor who's willing to work with them to improve their study skills. Remediation, especially where athletes are concerned, isn't exactly new to universities. The writers compare the situation to an Auburn professor's "directed readings" given primarily to athletes to boost their GPA. But this is exactly where the difference between Michigan and a lot of these other colleges needs to be pointed out: those "directed readings" were junk courses designed to give players an easy A. The independent studies the article hones in on were study skills courses designed to help students understand how to perform better in their other classes. It shouldn't be surprising that these courses were taken largely by athletes with lower than average GPAs, and Michigan should be commended for taking personal interest in the academic success of its student-athletes, unlike most football factory schools.
Moreover, the only whistle-blowing sources the authors can muster up are two anonymous former employees of the university and a professor who was displaced from an important office by a departmental reorganization and wanted the post that John Hagen, the professor in question, ended up with. The university itself investigated the situation twice and affirmed the program's academic value both times. Now, I could obviously be wrong, but there just doesn't seem to be anything of interest here.
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