Free Republic

A university learning specialist has received death threats and hateful messages after she exposed shockingly low academic levels among revenue athletes the University of North Carolina. Mary Willingham found that between eight and ten per cent of college’s football and basketball players had a reading level of a third grader. By studying eight years of test scores from University of Carolina’s revenue sports players, she found that a majority had a reading level between fourth and eighth grade. ‘We may as well go over to the elementary school up the street and let the fourth-graders and third-graders in here,’ she...

(CNN) -- Early in her career as a learning specialist, Mary Willingham was in her office when a basketball player at the University of North Carolina walked in looking for help with his classwork. He couldn't read or write. "And I kind of panicked. What do you do with that?" she said, recalling the meeting. Willingham's job was to help athletes who weren't quite ready academically for the work required at UNC at Chapel Hill, one of the country's top public universities. But she was shocked that one couldn't read. And then she found he was not an anomaly. Soon,...