Forest Trail Sports University is offering student-athletes something no academic institution can provide under the rules of the NCAA: a chance to practice a sport year-round while earning a college credential.
Forest Trail can do that because it is in no way a traditional academic institution: It has no faculty members, not even part-time instructors. It is not accredited, and it does not offer its own courses.
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Forest Trail Sports University is offering student-athletes something no academic institution can provide under the rules of the NCAA: a chance to practice a sport year-round while earning a college credential.
Forest Trail can do that because it is in no way a traditional academic institution: It has no faculty members, not even part-time instructors. It is not accredited, and it does not offer its own courses.
Instead, Forest Trail is a private company, owned by a woman in Florida, with plans to lease the campus facilities of Barber-Scotia College, a historically black institution in North Carolina that has struggled to survive since losing its accreditation, in 2004.
Participants at Forest Trail must be admitted to Waldorf University, an accredited for-profit institution based in Iowa. (Waldorf and the Alabama-based, online, for-profit Columbia Southern University are both owned by Columbia Southern Education Group Inc.). Enrolling through Waldorf will make Forest Trail’s students eligible for federal financial aid.
Waldorf’s offerings will then be “piped in” to classrooms where coaches and tutors will assist students, said Greg Eidschun, Forest Trail’s athletic director and head baseball coach.
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Mr. Eidschun, who also runs a company that helps high-school students make it into college sports programs, said Forest Trail appeals to athletes who want to practice with their coach and team year-round, which is not allowed under the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In addition, the coaches can have close interaction with the students to make sure they are completing courses, he said.
Gifty Chung, who is the registered owner of Forest Trail, said the venture creates an opportunity for athletes who are passionate about their sport but not necessarily talented enough to play in the NCAA.
But Forest Trail’s model falls into a gray area of regulation, and that raises questions for some higher-education experts about who is looking out for the students.
“It definitely seems fishy enough that the accreditor should be looking into it, as well as the state,” said Robert M. Shireman, a former deputy under secretary at the U.S. Department of Education who is now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank.
A Rapid Start
Forest Trail’s development has been relatively rapid. According to documents from the North Carolina secretary of state, Ms. Chung formed her company in January, and it is scheduled to open its doors to student-athletes this fall. It was initially called North Carolina Sports University, but the name was changed because it was too similar to North Carolina State University, Mr. Eidschun said. In addition, both entities use wolves as their mascots — “Wolfpack” for North Carolina State and “Timberwolves” for Forest Trail.
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Ms. Chung said in an interview that the idea for the enterprise arose from her experience running two different schools. Forest Trail Academy, an accredited online school based in Florida, serves about 1,000 elementary and secondary students, according to Ms. Chung.
The second, also named Forest Trail Academy, is located in North Carolina and serves about 70 athletes who need more time and preparation to meet the NCAA’s academic requirements, Ms. Chung said.
Her newest venture is meant to fill a gap for students who love their sports “but may not have been athletically gifted,” she said.
Mr. Eidschun said there has been no problem attracting students to Forest Trail. So far, the company anticipates 200 to 250 students for the fall semester, though it is still trying to fill rosters for the volleyball, golf, and cheerleading teams. And Forest Trail is arranging to compete with colleges in both the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the NCAA, Mr. Eidschun said, though he could not specify any particular colleges. The company also will seek membership in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, though an initial application was denied, Mr. Eidschun said.
A Student’s Perspective
Abryl Olivas, from Odessa, Tex., said in an email that she had decided to attend Forest Trail after hearing about it from her volleyball-club coach. Although she had planned to attend Texas Tech University for the academics, she changed her mind when her club season ended. “I realized I did not want to stop doing the one thing that eased my mind the most,” she wrote.
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In addition, she said, Forest Trail is offering her a $20,000 scholarship.
That amount will cover more than half of the listed price of $38,700, which includes tuition at Waldorf, a double room on the Barber-Scotia campus, and 14 meals per week, according to the company’s website. She said she planned to work to cover the rest of the cost.
B. David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University, said that while he has concerns about Forest Trail, it may be a positive innovation because it removes the idea that student-athletes are at an insitution primarily for a college degree.
“Instead of the facade, let’s admit that the main reason they are there is to play sports,” he said.
But much of how Forest Trail will operate is unclear. Although the campus is supposed to open this fall, Ms. Chung could provide few specifics. The number of staff members could vary between 30 and 45, she said, with about 20 of those being coaches.
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“We keep growing,” Ms. Chung said. “We’re trying to establish how many students we want.”
It’s also not clear whether Ms. Chung and her staff have set policies for the health and well-being of the athletes, such as a protocol for dealing with concussions. “We’re not forced to be in compliance” with NCAA standards, Ms. Chung said, “but obviously safety is a concern.” She said the company would be hiring “superb” athletic trainers to look out for the athletes’ safety.
Ms. Chung would not divulge how much Forest Trail would pay Barber-Scotia for the lease or any other financial details about the company.
She also declined to talk about her own troubled finances, saying that was a “personal issue.” In 2013 she and her husband, Henriko Chung, filed for bankruptcy, owing the federal government more than $434,000 in unpaid income taxes and liens. In addition, the bankruptcy documents show a federal judgment of nearly $865,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice. The judgment was ordered after Mr. Chung pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges of illegally distributing controlled substances and money laundering.
A Hybrid of Sorts
In some ways the deal between Waldorf and Forest Trail is common. Waldorf has arrangements to offer courses to employees at dozens of private companies and students at individually accredited colleges.
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And there are other for-profit colleges with athletics programs, though those programs are much more traditional. For example, Ashford University, the online company that for a while maintained a campus in Clinton, Iowa, recruited athletes from around the world. Waldorf University has an athletics program that is part of the NAIA, and Grand Canyon University, a for-profit institution in Phoenix, competes in Division I of the NCAA.
There are other examples of nonacademic companies that call themselves universities, such as Trump University. The now-defunct company, which offered to teach students the methods of the real-estate mogul and now-presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the subject of a lawsuit by former students.
But Forest Trail is something different: an entity that calls itself a university and promotes a college credential without actually being an academic institution; an extended athletic camp that says its participants can also earn a college degree.
Robert A. Alsop, president of Waldorf University, acknowledged that the way Forest Trail is presenting itself and its relationship to Waldorf could be misunderstood. “Part of the problem here is that Forest Trail is being called a university, so I understand the confusion,” he said.
Mr. Shireman, of the Century Foundation, said the information on the website suggests that Forest Trail is an extension of Waldorf. If that is the case, he said, Waldorf’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, should be overseeing the arrangement.
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Steve Kauffman, a spokesman for the commission, one of the nation’s seven regional accrediting agencies, said in an email that “there appears to be nothing extraordinary from our perspective. These are Waldorf’s admitted and enrolled students receiving academic instruction from Waldorf faculty.”
After getting an inquiry from The Chronicle, there is one state agency that says it will look into Forest Trail: The Office of Proprietary Schools at North Carolina’s Board of Community Colleges said it would contact the company to see whether the business falls under its regulations.
“If they are offering vocational-certificate or diploma programs, they may need to be licensed,” Scott Corl, executive director of that office, wrote in an email. “Our office will be contacting the school to determine whether they do, in fact, offer nondegree vocational programs.”
Ms. Chung told The Chronicle that she didn’t think it was necessary for her to be licensed by the state agency. She also said that the questions about Forest Trail are the same kinds of issues people raised when she started her online high school. “It’s innovative and different. People don’t get it,” she said.
Mr. Shireman said the sooner the better for some oversight. “It’s not clear what’s going on,” he said, “but there is a significant amount of money involved, and better to do that upfront rather than clean up a mess.”
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Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
Eric Kelderman covers issues of power, politics, and purse strings in higher education. You can email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com, or find him on Twitter @etkeld.