Two significant developments emerged on Thursday as college presidents and officials attempt to deal with high school athletes attending so-called diploma mills.
Early next week, the NCAA is expected to release its first list of high schools lacking proper academic rigor, which means those schools' transcripts will no longer be accepted by the NCAA. The Southeastern Conference is expected to pass legislation Friday that will give the commissioner's office final authority on questionable transcripts, Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said.
Kevin Lennon, the NCAA vice president for membership services, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the NCAA had been making unannounced visits to schools to research their legitimacy.
Lennon said that the NCAA sent out a questionnaire to about 50 schools requesting more information on their academics. He said that the schools that did not respond would be removed from the NCAA's list of approved schools, which would essentially mean that students who attend those schools could not qualify for athletic scholarships.
The NCAA's actions come after a series of articles in The New York Times illustrating how high schools and prep schools gave students fast and easy grades so they could qualify for athletic scholarships.
"We've identified those schools that we need to make contact with immediately," Lennon said. "We know that kids are waiting for decisions, and schools are waiting for decisions. We're trying to put some priority and order to this."
The list of high schools lacking proper academic rigor is expected to affect college basketball the most, as many of the questionable schools were set up around basketball teams.
Lennon said that the NCAA was standing by its controversial stance that students who are graduating this spring and have signed with universities will be denied athletic scholarships if their high school is on the list. (Athletes already enrolled at universities will not be affected.)
Don Jackson, a lawyer based in Montgomery, Alabama, said that he had already been contacted by 10 high schools to seek his legal advice.
"I fully expect a wave of lawsuits," Jackson said. "The NCAA is not an accrediting agency and not the state department of education. They have no legal authority to make value judgments on the quality of education in a school."
Lennon said the NCAA was not fazed.
"Institutions that are not doing anything are what we're going to be concerned with," he said. "I can't say that the specter of lawsuits has increased." Lennon would not reveal what schools the NCAA has visited.
The SEC's proposal is another aggressive step for the conference, which in November wrote a strong letter to the NCAA president, Myles Brand, requesting that he take the issue of fraudulent high school credentials seriously.
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