DuckSouth.com

I'm not defending college players or anything, but anyone who has ever been in college knows how it goes when it comes to teachers. Most of the slackers at any university athlete or non-athlete spend more time trying to get the easiest teacher for the class...they call around to all their buddies to see what the easiest guy to take for a given course is and then they register for it. Athletes have an advatage cause they can register for a course a week earlier than anyone else so the courses are never full, and have a larger pool of references on a teacher than a normal student. I don't think its just the athletes i think its society and students today as a whole. I'll never forget my first week of my freshman year when my grandparents came to meet me in oxford to eat lunch one day. My granddad was appauled that I didn't wear slacks and a tie to class and instead shorts and flip flops....just shows you how times change. I was lucky however since for most of my courses only one guy taught them so they could be as hard as they wanted and you knew if you didn't pass then you would just see them again next year. Sorry if I got off subject.

Professor Gundlach is back pedaling now saying he didn't intend to involve the athletic department of football players.

no chit ya think he's felt a little pressure..

Interesting read from the local paper in Auburn:

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Richardson to address grade probe


Staff and wire Reports / Opelika-Auburn News
July 21, 2006


Auburn University Interim President Ed Richardson this morning will make his first public statement about an ongoing investigation at the university into allegations of academic irregularities.

Richardson will make a statement to media in the lobby of Samford Hall at 10 a.m.

Auburn sociology professor James Gundlach went public recently with claims that a colleague taught more than 250 students - including 18 football players - during the 2004-05 academic year in so-called "directed-reading courses," in which students are supposed to meet privately with professors and perform assignments rather than attend regular classes.

AU has appointed a committee to investigate the complaint, which was filed through an anonymous online system called EthicsPoint. The committee was formed on June 5 and has been meeting on campus most of the week.

The claims included that the players who took the courses made far better grades in those classes than in their other schoolwork.

Schools around the Southeastern Conference and beyond have programs similar to the one-on-one course that has raised questions about academic standards and football at Auburn University.

Other SEC universities say their programs are much smaller than the one that has been described at Auburn, however, and similar allegations of abuse haven’t come up.

An administrator with the American Association of University Professors, Robert Kreiser, said most U.S. colleges offer programs like the directed-reading courses that have been described at Auburn. Sometimes the courses are referred to as "independent study" or "readings" classes, he said.

But a single professor would seldom have more than one or two students enrolled in such a course per semester, he said, and those students are almost always in upper-level undergraduate or graduate programs.

"They’re not uncommon," said Kreiser, senior program officer with the association. "Whether these courses were offered by this sociology professor to numbers of football players at Auburn is another matter."

Such courses are offered at universities throughout the Birmingham-based SEC, according to a survey of the schools by The Associated Press.

The University of Mississippi has eight directed-reading courses in its catalog, but all are upper-level courses that are rarely taken, according to Associate Provost Tim Hall. Hall said he was surprised to hear what was reportedly going on at Auburn.

"When I saw a number of like 200 for one of those professors I was like ‘Wow.’ We don’t have those kind of numbers here," he said.

Such courses are typically called "individual work" at the University of Florida, said Associate Provost Joe Glover. The classes are particularly difficult for professors to teach because of the one-on-one oversight, he said, and any professor with a large number of students "would certainly raise eyebrows here."

At the University of Alabama, spokeswoman Cathy Andreen said directed-reading courses were rare at the undergraduate level.

"One example is a directed-readings course in Russian offered by the Department of Modern Languages and Classics," she said. "The enrollment in a course like this would be small."

Like other schools, the University of Arkansas lets top-level students craft a course through consultation with a professor and then work independently.

"A student can go to a professor and say (something like), ‘I’m very interested in Native American studies. Can you give me some papers or books to read?"’ said Steve Voorhies, a spokesman at Arkansas. "For people who are thinking of going to graduate school it’s considered a good thing for your resume. But if it’s not monitored there could certainly be some problems."

Courses designed around one-on-one work between professors and students also are offered at the University of Georgia, the University of South Carolina, the University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and the University of Kentucky.

Officials at Georgia, Kentucky and Ole Miss told the Opelika-Auburn News that students must apply to take the special classes and each application is reviewed by the department head in that department to assign credit hours. Auburn officials said last week that there was not a written policy for such classes there.

Auburn is reviewing what went on in its sociology department, and an academic accrediting organization, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, has requested information about the program from the university.

Kreiser said schools have a "high degree of discretion" in administering independent study courses, and the organization for university professors is staying out of the controversy at Auburn.

"We believe that this is a matter that is the responsibility for the faculty and the administration to deal with," he said.

Jay Reeves of the Associated Press and Opelika-Auburn News Managing Editor Mitch Sneed contributed to this report.

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Based upon the research done by the author of this article, it appears that the widespread usage of these types of directed study classes at AU is NOT commonplace at other SEC schools, etc. To the contrary, the typical usage of these types of classes are for upper level undergrad or grad students, and are few in number. Very interesting stuff.

hey po monk.. can ya hit me with that t tub quote again.. ya know the one bout his boys getting it done on the field and in the classroom..

"It all boils down to our players getting the job done in the classroom. What they've done and how they've done it, combined with the success we've had on the field, makes it pretty special." (TT)

i couldn't agree more coach t

Auburn responds:

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Friday, July 21, 2006

AU responds to academic controversy
AUBURN — There won’t be a speedy conclusion to Auburn’s investigation of academic misconduct.
The university’s internal investigation, which was prompted by a front-page New York Times story last week, could last another month, Auburn interim president Ed Richardson said today.
Even so, Richardson said he was already prepared to offer a set of policies that would reign in directed-reading courses at the university. The Times’ story alleged that sociology professor Thomas Petee abused the directed-reading courses by giving credit to students — including many athletes — for little or no work.
Speaking at a morning press conference in the lobby of Samford Hall, Richardson said he would present the reform policies to the board of trustees on Aug. 4.
The new policies would:
Limit the number of directed-reading courses that any single instructor can offer.
Ensure that every course at Auburn is “taught with the academic rigor our students deserve and all have the right to expect.”
Ensure that “proper administrative oversight is in place throughout the university.”
Richardson said he had spoken with representatives from the NCAA and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Auburn’s accrediting agency. He said he did not expect sanctions from either group.
Richardson said he was more concerned with the university’s reputation in light of the allegations.
“We have inherited a strong academic reputation due to the hard work of alumni, faculty and students, and it is my job to ensure that we continue to earn that reputation,” Richardson said.
He called this morning’s press briefing, during which he took no questions, a “first step,” not a conclusion. He said the delays in the inquiry stemmed from the difficulty in tracking down former and current students for interviews in the middle of the summer.
“In the event that any academic misconduct is confirmed, we will take appropriate action,” he said.
Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville said this week that he hoped the investigation would be wrapped up soon, but the length of the investigation could keep the story on the front-burner for at least another month.
Tuberville is expected to face plenty of questions about the controversy at next week’s SEC Media Days. Auburn begins fall practice in less than two weeks, and the Tigers’ first game is Sept. 2 against Washington State.

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Looks like this will drag out all summer long, right into the season. Darn.