UNC anticipates update on accreditation status

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which does accreditation for the University of North Carolina, has completed its review of the revelations of the Wainstein report and sent a letter to the school Thursday. SACS declined to comment about the contents of the letter.

Posted 6:00 p.m. Nov 13, 2014 — Updated 6:04 p.m. Nov 13, 2014

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which handles accreditation for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has completed its review of the revelations of the Wainstein report and sent a letter to the school Thursday. SACS declined to comment about the contents of the letter.

The university should get the letter Friday or Monday, said Belle Wheelan, SACS president.

The 131-page Wainstein report found about 1,500 athletes and slightly more regular students benefited over about 18 years from sham classes and artificially high grades in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies Department.

In a presentation to UNC leadership on Oct. 22, former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein detailed how academic counselors steered student-athletes to classes in the former Department of African and Afro-American Studies that never met.

According to the report, former department Chairman Julius Nyang'oro and his department manager, Deborah Crowder, were responsible for offering hundreds of “irregular” classes that had no faculty involvement. Crowder managed the classes and assigned grades.

SACS put the university on notice when claims of academic impropriety surfaced in 2011, and Wheelan said her organization would consider the Wainstein report as a new issue.

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