CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.

MERRILL ROBERTSON leans back in his chair and stretches his legs beneath a table. As study hall winds down on a recent Thursday evening at the University of Virginia, the freshman running back is one of the last students left in the academic-affairs offices in the McCue Center, one of the athletics buildings on the northwest side of campus.

Rocking back and forth, he looks over at Trent Pomplun, one of Virginia's tutors for athletes, who is assigned to Mr. Robertson as a mentor.

"I took my psych test today-it went okay," he says to Mr. Pomplun, a doctoral candidate in Eastern religion. "So now I don't have anything else in that class for awhile." Virginia and virtually all other institutions in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association provide an array of advisers, tutors, and mentors to help athletes learn how to balance the demands of the classroom and the playing field.

However, in the wake of academic scandals involving athletes at the University of Minnesota and the University of Tennessee, colleges face a troubling set of questions about such advising. To whom is an academic adviser responsible? To the coaches and athletics administrators, who need players in class and eligible to compete? Or to the faculty members, who in increasing numbers are calling for tougher academic standards for athletes?

"When I came here, we were totally within the athletics department-I reported solely to the athletics director," says Richard R. McGuire, Virginia's director of academic affairs for athletes since 1982. "Frankly, there wasn't any problem with that, and I never felt any pressure.

"But of course, the natural question is, If you take the king's shilling, do you do the king's bidding?"

REPORTING TO THE PROVOST

Five years ago, the university decided to have advisers report to the provost as well as to the athletics director. Now, 51 per cent of Mr. McGuire's salary is paid out of the faculty budget, and he is an administrator in the College of Arts and Sciences. He has a staff of three professional advisersCynthia Cardosi, Chad Horton, and Kathryn Jarvis-and 28 tutors, all of whom are graduate students or senior undergraduates at Virginia.

Now, faculty members at other institutions are calling for similar arrangements.

"If you look at this profession, you'll see a lot of turnover and a lot of frustrated people," says John G. Blanchard, director of academic counseling at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. "They're tired of being put in situations where they are pushed to the line of ethical behavior. I think institutions are finally realizing this and making these moves."

At Minnesota, an athletics-department secretary completed more than 400 course assignments for players over a five-year period without ever being detected, according to a report released in November by university investigators.

As a result, Mark G. Yudof, Minnesota's president, has announced a series of changes to make the athletics department more accountable to the rest of the university. Among them is transferring responsibility for academic advising from the athletics department to the provost's office. For the past decade, the academic adviser for the basketball team, Alonzo M. Newby, worked directly for the coach, Clem S. Haskins. The adviser did not report even to the athletics department's own director of academic counseling.

Mr. Newby steered players to Jan Gangelhoff, the secretary who wrote their papers, according to the report. He also got players into easy classes and even scouted out professors ahead of time to make sure that they were "friendly" to the basketball program, the report says.

He was transferred from the academiccounseling office in 1994 because of a poor working relationship between Elayne Donahue, the office's director at the time, and Mr. Haskins. That move, according toz.he report, enabled Ms. Gangelhoff and others to continue writing papers for players without being detected.

A BROAD REORGANIZATION

Mr. Newby was fired in June for refusing to cooperate with the investigation and Mr. Haskins resigned under pressure (the university bought out his contract for $1.5million.) Mr. Newby has not commented on the allegations, and Mr. Haskins has denied all knowledge of academic misbehavior.

Mr. Yudof's decision to put the academic-counseling office under the purview of the provost came after a faculty committee suggested the move as part of a broad reorganization of the athletics department. The president agreed to carry out those recommendations when he released the report this month.

"We heard testimony about how disconnected from the academic enterprise the Academic Counseling office believed itself to be, and such a situation is not appropriate or healthy for an office charged with aiding students in their educational work," wrote Thomas S. Clayton, a professor of English, in the committee's report.

Mr. Blanchard, who took over the academic-counseling office this year, just before the scandal broke, says he agrees wholeheartedly with the recommendation. "In athletics, coaches are responsible for wins and losses, and they're hired and fired on that basis. In academics, we can't be held to that kind of thinking. Therefore, moving academic-support units into offices such as academic affairs or the provost, helps shield the academiccounseling staff from that kind of thinking."

EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING

At Tennessee's Knoxville campus, the facts are not as clearcut as at Minnesota. ESPN.COM, the World-Wide Web site of the sports-television network, reported in September that it had evidence that athletics-department tutors had completed assignments for several athletes. The department suspended four football players for one game this season, on suspicion of "excessive collaboration" between players and tutors.

A Tennessee investigation subsequently found no violations of N.C.A.A. rules, but did note disagreements between the athletics and English departments over what constituted excessive collaboration. The N.C.A.A. has reportedly talked with former athletics tutors involved in the case, but a spokeswoman for the association would not say whether it was conducting an official inquiry.

The scope of the university's investigation was too narrow, says Linda Bensel-Meyers, a professor of English and director of composition at Tennessee. By focusing on N.C.A.A. rules violations, she argues, the university neglected to confront the larger question of whether athletes were actually learning anything.

Athletes "are not allowed to put education before eligibility in what goes on" in Tennessee's athletics program, says Ms. Bensel-Meyers, who runs all tutoring services for the English department, including writing tutors for athletics. Instead, she says, tutors do the work for them, under some pressure from athletics officials and even athletes themselves. Tutors are " not being trained in terms of what is acceptable help," she says.

That assessment is disputed by Carmen J. Tegano, associate director for student life in the men's athletics department at Tennessee. Including himself, there are four academic advisers with doctoral degrees working with athletes, he says, and the advisers are committed to helping athletes graduate, not just stay eligible.

"Male student-athletes at the University of Tennessee have the highest graduation rate of any subgroup," including female athletes and male and female students as a whole, Mr. Tegano notes. "So, apparently, we are accomplishing our goal, which is basically to graduate our student-athletes."

HIGHLY TRAINED PEOPLE

Douglas A. Dickey, director of men's athletics, dismisses the idea that athletics officials can't be trusted to oversee academic affairs for their athletes. "This is not being done by an old coach," says Mr. Dickey, a former head football coach for the Volunteers. "We have highly trained professional people-we hire graduate students from all over campus, people who are recommended by their departments. That's a challenge I resent-that people think we can't be responsible to the rest of the university."

However, the impression is certainly out there at many institutions, says Jack M. Rivas, president of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics. He is an academic adviser at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

"I don't have numbers on reporting lines for our members, but more and more institutions are starting to say that reporting lines should go to some academic office, like the academic vice-chancellor or provost or dean of academic affairs, rather than the athletics department," he says. "Already, people look at athletics somewhat askew, wondering, What are they doing over there? It seems like it makes [tutors] less likely to be questioned when they answer to somebody with an academic appointment. "

ACCOUNTABILITY IS KEY

Mr. Rivas reports to the provost at Santa Barbara. And Minnesota's Mr. Blanchard, in his previous capacity as director of academic affairs for the athletics department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reported to an associate dean for academic services.

At Virginia, says Mr. McGuire, the director of academic affairs for athletes, the key for everybody involved-athletes, -tutors, administrators, coaches-is accountability. Tutors and mentors must work more closely with faculty members; coaches must insure that athletes understand the importance of academics; and administrators must provide tutors with the resources they need.

"I think everyone's pretty aware of what's happened at other places and what's at stake if something goes awry," says Mr. McGuire.

"What we're trying to do here is provide the student-athletes with the kind of support they need, and at the same time to cultivate a positive culture. Athletes need to see deans and faculty advisers."

Down the hall, Mr. Robertson, the running back, shakes his head in disbelief. There are still six weeks left in the semester, but term papers and finals are looming. "Man, it's almost halfway through my freshman year," he says, looking over at Mr. Pomplun, his mentor. "College is going by so quickly."

It's a comment one might hear from any Virginia freshman. And that, say Mr. Robertson's advisers, is the point. U