Over nearly 20 years leading up to 2012, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill boasted a top 30 national ranking in US News and World Report, graduated nearly two dozen Rhodes scholars, and proudly wore the name of the state's flagship university.
The school also won multiple national championships in men's basketball, conference and individual championships across its 28 varsity sports, and continually finished near the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference in graduation rates and academic honors.
In the past five years, UNC has admitted that during that same period over 3,100 students, mostly athletes, were directed by advisers to take "paper classes", which never met and required only a single paper to pass.