If you have an interest in ensuring that the tax dollars you provide to your local colleges and universities are not going to support academic fraud, read Jay Smith’s and Mary Willingham’s book “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports“.

Your first inclination may be to say, “Well, the UNC scandal was at a major school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  And it’s got a major megabucks athletic program.  We’re in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and we only have a dinky community college.”

But when you read the book, you may well conclude otherwise.   “Cheated” educates readers to understand how academic frauds not only occur in our institutions of higher (or not) learning but also how the frauds can be created or promoted by elected boards of trustees, hired administrators, faculty, and staff.  Initially, the motivation for propagating the frauds is to bring in money for the college or university.   Never mind the message that sends to the “student”-athletes and to the honest students who work diligently to earn their degrees honestly.

“Cheated” is not an easy read.  Smith and Willingham are academics, and their writing style is informative and instructional rather than entertaining.  Still, it is worth reading.  It is an eyeopener, a reminder to the people that those whom they elect or appoint to run their colleges and universities and educate their students are not necessarily acting in the best interests of the students they purport to be educating.  The public needs to be less trusting and pay more attention.