A few questions: (1) do you have tenure? (2) do you know if any of your colleagues are similarly uncomfortable with this course?

All of the class numbers and class names are fake. Real classes very similar to these do exist at my university, but these are not their names or numbers.

Additional Questions: (1) Is this at a US university? (2) How long have you been at the university? (3) Are you on a tenure track or are you part-time? (4) How long have the courses been on record for the department? (5) What is the official guide on how teaching is to be assigned (this is typically given in a Faculty Handbook)?

If these exist at your university, the ombdusperson and the faculty senate chair might be useful people to talk to.

My hunch is that whistleblowing would work a lot better once you have actually taught that "class", since at this moment you are operating based on fairly subjective intuitions (a class being less rigorous than another can be corroborated with data, but you probably don't have that data yet). You need smoking guns. Be an investigative journalist; don't give away your intent too early.

@darijgrinberg: OP was handed a pre-written syllabus, which specifies that the course is not to require any actual academic work at all. Sounds like a smoking gun to me.

@darijgrinberg: But nominally the instructor usually has final authority to set their own syllabus. So I'd wonder if the administration could put the blame back on OP: "It was your course, so if you didn't teach any real content, that's your fault. The given syllabus was just a starting point and you were expected to fill in the rest." I'd want to have a strong paper trail showing they were forced to teach it as a no-work class, and that may be hard to get if the chair applies more subtle pressure.

In other words, if it's as bad as it sounds and OP teaches it as expected, OP is complicit, and possibly vulnerable to being a scapegoat.

Not having rigor and being fraudulent are not the same thing. The potentially fraudulent part seems to me your statement that a student could earn nine credits for attendance in three "courses" simultaneously. You don't say what the other 90% of requirements are or whether the 50 minute session is the only requirement. 10% for participation is not a red flag IMO. Without knowing more about it and assuming I had some freedom, I could probably create a valid course (flipped classroom) as long as I could depend on a small enough cass size, student activity outside the classroom (more)...

and having students "learning" only the one topic (not three). Can you say enough more about the syllabus and the expectations to make the situation clearer. Some such "courses" might be useful for other student groups, in fact. But the university would need to be open about the requirements so that it isn't a fraudulent scheme. Say more if you can, please.

A chat room to discuss these issues might be a good thing. I think there are lots of things to learn before I could start to formulate a valid answer for your concerns. Can you create one? Or just chat a bit in the Ivory Tower.

@NateEldredge The OP is not complicit in Academic Fraud because the OP did not establish the course description and in fact in this case did not even develop the course syllabus by themself. The fraud is from the department or above. The best the instructor must do here is follow the requirements of the course description and the syllabus as dictated to him/her, document that he/she did so to the fullest extent possible, and then move on.

@academic: 'So the "Explorations" classes can effectively be taken all at once by signing up for all three classes and then just sitting in the big room and "participating."' This is something the OP would have to see with their own eyes; if it's just hearsay, it will be questioned. As for the empty syllabus, it may mean that the teacher is supposed to set their own syllabus, or at least the university may well push this interpretation if the OP hasn't actually taught the class. Thus I suggest teaching the class with a reasonable amount of rigor and acting bewildered when complaints arise. ...

... At that point, there will likely be enough material to come out of the closet. Simulate possible responses in your head, from "I wanted to give this fresh faculty an easy class to teach, and now they are stabbing me in the back!" through "the syllabus isn't mine; it's just what the previous guy taught" through "who said it's for athletes only?" all the way to a dozen creative interpretations of Godwin's law (particularly if there is a substantial minority presence in the class).

@darijgrinberg:OP might be able to check now if any students have enrolled in more than one of the classes. If yes, that's a smoking gun; if no, then OP's suspicions on this matter are either incorrect or irrelevant.

@academic: Even that can be bullshat away by administrations until they actually come to class and the walls are open! "They didn't realize the classes were concurrent!" or "Well, we're going to move them apart in time seeing that so many students want to take all three of them!"

This is getting interesting! Is the grade breakdown official? How much proof do you have that non-athletes cannot get into that class? (I could imagine asking a student to try enrolling... but a practically easier and less invasive way to go would be to ask your dean whether you should recommend the class to other undergrads.)

@anonymous Credit amount is determined by the Department -> Dean -> Academic VP. (That's the chain of approval). The department proposes a class (name, number, credits, standard outcomes), the dean approves it, then the Academic VP's office approves it.

@darijgrinberg I have inferred that as long as a student asks, they can add the class. I do not think that the department chair has declined to approve an add yet. However, how many students are going to go to the effort to seek out approval from the department? It certainly discourages students not "in the know" from adding the class.

Nevertheless, asking whether you can advertise the class to good students can be a good way to probe the sinistrality of the whole offering.

Long ago, I encountered a similar thing at a pretty fancy uni... and tried to resist... but it seemed that the main effect of my resistance would be black marks against me, since the idea of "greater good" [sic] was interpreted significantly differently by (high-paid, influential) coaches and deans and VPs than by "mere" scholars/teachers/researchers. Don't immolate yourself... pre-tenure. It's like offending dangerous criminal organizations, or ... corporations? :) Srsly, you are not in a good situation to push back.

... and, further, even if you try to grade according to reasonable guidelines you've announced at the beginning, your grades can probably be over-ruled and changed by higher-ups, whether you protest or not. That has happened to me.

Gads, what a soul-crushing misery.

I think you should be even more worried about the possibility of financial aid fraud than academic fraud. Financial aid fraud could lead to big fines or maybe prison time.

Of course it’s a US university, in other countries being a professional athlete for a hugely popular team is considered a full-time job which you get paid fair wages to do.

@Vladhagen: Hmm, so how about doing some outreach and promotion of this awesome and underappreciated class that you just found out about and might soon be teaching? Maybe offer to write about it on a blog or in a student newspaper? After all, surely there can be nothing wrong in advertising all the cool classes your university offers in order to "engender interest in the college"?

It's a shame I can't upvote this more than once. This is likely an issue most of US academics have faced at some point and haven't have had the chance to discuss it this way. Q: isn't it widely known that athletes' college degrees are mostly symbolic, hence making them pretty much unemployable?

You probably should have written this to a throwaway account, rather than one you may use in the future.

Are you perhaps a fairly recent immigrant to the US? Did you get your degree at a non-US university? Because this is something that happens at (almost) every university that fields sports teams. Blowing a whistle would be absolutely pointless, since everyone except foreigners and the hopelessly naive knows that it happens, and most of them WANT it to happen so that "their team" has a better chance of winning. Teach the course to the best of your ability, give the jocks all As and Bs, and hope you have better luck in course assignments next year :-(

"Should I blow the whistle here?" depends strongly on your personal circumstances and values. I've flagged this question for closure with that reason. "What should I do about this moral crisis?" is off topic on all Stack Exchanges where such matters are likely to come up. The question could be made on topic by stating what you have decided you want to accomplish and asking how to best go about it, though.

One thing I seem to have missed: do the three Explorations classes actually run on the same days at the same time?

@Van, Yes the classes meet at the same time on the same day. For example, let's say all three classes meet at 2 pm on Thursdays.

@MarkRogers I sort of doubt that anyone will track me down. It would take an insane amount of work to figure out who I am.

Machiavellian solution: make your talks so mind-numbingly boring (or simply incomprehensible) that they all fail because of no participation, followed by no attendance :)

I'm not saying it's a definite nail-in-the-coffin, but it's starting to look like there is the potential for this class (es) to be taken advantage of. Perhaps the powers that be set this up so that students can't register for all three at the same time, and it's strictly enforced. In which case, great! Good for them. But, if you actually see instances of the same person getting credit for multiple concurrent classes, well, that's exactly what you are afraid is happening. I want to stress, though, potential is not proof. Even with proof, any whistleblowing will be a fight.

At my college "3 credit hours" meant "3 class hours/week" but yeah if it's just listening to lectures that would typically be like a 1 credit hour...hmm maybe when you can recommend that students have to take "3 classes" of it in order to qualify or something, triple the class time... :| Or maybe assign them some more homework to bring it up to spec (go listen to these TED talks LOL). But the person you should talk to is whoever decides how many credit hours the class gets (dept. chair?)

As a minor note, I think you're making too much out of the "shared room". Since you have three different professors teaching the three classes, nobody sane is going to force you to leave those accordion curtains open. They're going to be closed. At which point it is no different than having multiple similar classes along the same hallway.

@eykanal You've made specific notes about "clarifying comments" on the question, but wouldn't my comment above also be appropriate, since it's addressing what edits need to be made to make the question on-topic?

Nevermind. That won't notify anyone. I've just reposted it and we'll see if it's deleted. It should be appropriate, since it's suggesting specific changes that need to happen to the post.