BYU's online class cheaters getting younger?
At 6-foot-3 and 320 pounds, Jerrell Powe was a star high school football player busting through opponents' schemes and the confines of a small Mississippi town. His ultimate destination was the NFL, where he could earn millions and avoid the drudgery of some dead-end job that otherwise loomed in his future.
But there was one block he couldn't get past to achieve his goal: He lacked the grades he needed to get to college, the last stop before the NFL.
Luckily, Brigham Young University was there to save him - or so he thought.
Powe, with a tutor's assistance, took 14 classes through BYU's online distance learning program from January 2005 to July 2006, including reading comprehension, algebra and history. He received four A's, even though the only other A's he got in high school were in physical education classes.
The BYU classes, along with others taken at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, were enough to earn Powe the credits necessary to admit him to the University of Mississippi.
The NCAA, however, blocked his admission, characterizing his BYU grades as "suspicious." The organization that sets the rules for college athletes had dealt with players in the past who used BYU's online program to cheat.
The Provo school - responding to cheating allegations involving athletes at Barton County Community College in Kansas, Nicholls State University in Louisiana and the University of Kansas, as detailed in a Salt Lake Tribune investigation earlier this year - made changes to its online program to thwart dishonesty.
Now, test questions change constantly, and exams must be taken at sites certified by BYU. In addition, the only college athletes who may take the school's independent study courses are those who attend BYU. BYU relies on the honor system, however, simply asking students enrolling to confirm they are not athletes, spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said.
And as Powe's case may illustrate, there is a new problem facing BYU's program. There are few safeguards in place to stop high school students from trying to take advantage of the system.
In September, The New York Times reported on Michael Oher, a high school star in Memphis who replaced his failing grades with BYU "character education" courses in a practice described in the article as "the great Mormon grade-grab." Unlike Powe, Oher now attends and plays football at Ole Miss.
BYU is aware of new allegations involving high school athletes but insists it does everything it can to prevent cheating. "In any learning situation, there's a certain amount of trust that has to be placed on the students and the person teaching the course," Jenkins said.
She defends the program as "rigorous" and said it extends educational opportunities to students of all ages, whether they be teenagers or retirees. "It does provide another option for students to enlarge their education."
New Utah law
There is little doubt that BYU's online program is popular. Thousands of students in Utah and nationwide are enrolled, and participation is only expected to grow given a new Utah law that requires all public high schools to accept credit and grades from accredited institutions such as BYU.
But as participation has grown, concerns about the program have extended beyond allegations involving student-athletes.
Students can take more than one course, so it's hard to define the number enrolled, but Jenkins puts participation at 115,000 high school course enrollments, 28,000 college course enrollments and 16,000 noncredit personal enrichment course enrollments. About 107,000 of the high school enrollments are out-of-state students, as are about half of the college enrollments, she said.
In Utah's Jordan School District, most students use BYU or the state-run electronic high school for independent study, said Christen Richards-Khong, Jordan's secondary guidance specialist.
She believes BYU has built strong checks and balances into its online classes, and she trusts the testing center staff to monitor students. But she has general concerns about any online program.
"We have the same concern about cheating," Richards-Khong said.
Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, vigorously opposed Utah's new law extending the reach of online learning. Moss, a former teacher, said it enables failing students to essentially buy grades through programs such as those offered by BYU, which charges about $115 per half-credit course and allows students to retake the final exam for an additional $10.
"My concern is that kids who can afford it will get an easy A and pay for it, and others will have to tough it out and stick with the regular course in their school," she said.
Sen. Chris Buttars, the West Jordan Republican behind the law, trusts the accreditation system to ensure the quality of education offered by online programs.
"The Northwest Association of Accredited Schools has been there for 100 years, and they are good; they check you all the time," he said.
But even that organization has concerns about distance learning.
"You can't go sit and observe students taking an online course," spokesman LeonardĀ Paul said. "Any cheating-type issue is something the school itself needs to resolve, and it wouldn't necessarily impact the school's accreditation status unless the school didn't try to resolve the problem."
BYU's efforts to date are enough for it to maintain accreditation, even though the school's reputation as an easy place for high school students to get good grades apparently hasn't changed, regardless of whether it involves cheating.
'My God, it was easy'
Powe's path to college through BYU was a well-worn trail by the time he started his journey. Ginny Crager, the 65-year-oldĀ teacher who helped Powe, said she also served as a proctor on BYU credits for University of Southern California freshman Vidal Hazelton, whom Powe met at Hargrave Military Academy, as well as Ole Miss player Rory Johnson.
She learned of BYU's program when using the school's site to pursue her genealogy hobby. What she discovered is what others knew: BYU is a convenient, if not easy, place to load up on credits in a hurry.
"The NCAA accepted the BYU classes from others, but not Jerrell's," she said. "He is the one I hurt for."
The NCAA won't comment on specific institutions, but in a statement it said it recognizes online courses as legitimate. But "there is a need for diligent supervision and monitoring of these courses - including registration for and selection of courses, identification and conduct of proctors and exclusion of coaches from involvement."
The organization turned down Powe's BYU course work because it lacked evidence he did the work on his own without significant assistance. In addition, he completed "a vast amount of course work in a limited amount of time that was much shorter than the average time it takes students to complete BYU independent study courses," according to the statement.
Crager, who put up about $1,700 of her own money to pay for Powe's BYU courses, maintains she didn't do Powe's work for him, but rather, unlike other teachers, took the time to teach him. "He is a big, lovable kid, and he'd put his arm around people and hug them and they'd go, 'Oh gosh, OK, just go to sleep' or 'OK, just go to the field house,' and what happened to him is he learned nothing," she said.
Because he is considered "learning disabled," Powe was allowed to have a reader to help him with his work. Together with Crager, Powe passed the 14 BYU classes.
Crager scoffed at the NCAA's concern, although she acknowledges they finished some courses in a week or less.
"My God, it was easy," she said. "You could get through any high school course in three weeks. English was the most tedious because there was a lot of writing . . . the rest of them you could do in one to two days."
Jordan High School student Stephanie White also found BYU courses could be completed quickly.
The senior wanted to take more elective courses at Jordan High, so she decided to take art history and government classes through BYU to get the rest of the credits she needed to graduate.
She finished each course in about eight hours, even though Jenkins of BYU said each half-credit course should take 60 hours of work. White earned an A in both, but said the courses weren't necessarily easier than her high school classes.
"It was more challenging because I had to extract the information on my own," she said. "If I had gone through my school, I would have had assistance from my teacher."
White took her exam at the BYU testing center, which she said was "completely secure." But she "had to use the honor system" when completing her online assignments.
"I really don't have any experience knowing what people are doing with cheating," she said. "But if they are cheating, they are being unfair to themselves and doing themselves a disservice."
Crager, Powe's tutor, isn't surprised some students have abused BYU's online program. She said she raised such concerns with BYU officials.
"It could still happen," she said. "BYU needs to be concerned and make sure who is proctoring or monitoring isn't affiliated with the schools in any way and don't just give anybody the right to be a proctor."
Jenkins reiterated that BYU has "tools, resources and policies" in place to prevent cheating. "We are always concerned about cheating that occurs, even if it is with one student."
Haven't given up on Powe
After the NCAA denied his entry into Ole Miss, Powe sued and won a temporary restraining order that allowed him to enroll, but Powe left Ole Miss after a few days and decided to drop the lawsuit.
"He didn't want to be viewed as a troublemaker," said Joe Barnett, a Realtor who is a father figure and guidance counselor for Powe. "It's a nightmarish situation."
Barnett said Powe is working in Mississippi as a jailer, but his supporters haven't given up on seeing him play in college and then in the NFL. He could go back to high school and get his necessary credits, and nothing prevents him from doing that online.
"We may seek another tutor, a university tutor and proctor, if for some reason finger-pointing from the past at BYU carried over to our case," Barnett said. "BYU approved everything, and the NCAA didn't approve anything . . . based on that, we'd seek another university other than BYU."
lwodraska@sltrib.com
smcfarland@sltrib.com
How online courses work
Signing up for a Brigham Young University Internet course takes less than 10 minutes. To complete a course, students follow these steps:
* Visit ce.byu.edu/is/site/. Browse through the catalog and find a course. Choices include basic algebra and advanced biology. BYU offers 45 university courses, 226 high school courses and 77 personal enrichment courses.
* Use a credit card to pay for the course. Fill out a form indicating which school you're currently attending.
* Begin taking the course. Each class generally has several textbooklike pages with lessons and practice problems, and each section ends with a "speedback assignment" made up of about 20 questions you complete online. Work is graded immediately.
* After all course work is finished, call the BYU distance learning testing center to schedule an exam. Tests usually can be scheduled within three days, but exams can be ready the next day if you're willing to pay a nominal fee.
* Testing occurs at BYU or at a designated testing center. Present identification, and take the test on a computer in a room monitored by a testing center staff member.