The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) is publicly refuting Mary Willingham's student-athlete illiteracy findings with contradictory data of their own.

According to the Associated Press, UNC provost James W. Dean Jr. and the school's chancellor Carol Folt agree that Willingham's research is flawed. In a CNN article published earlier this month, Willingham said her research showed more than half of UNC's student-athletes could not read at above an eight-grade level.

In a statement late last week, UNC said CNN used its own academic threshold for determining what was college literate. While CNN claimed to use ACT and SAT scores from UNC's student-athletes, the school said it never received such a request, according to the statement. Instead, the CNN used observations from a school employee and input from academic experts.

Holt said in a separate statement that UNC's data is directly contradictory to Willingham's. Holt said data from the UNC Office of Undergraduate Admissions states only two of the 321 student-athletes admitted in 2012 and 2013 fell below the ACT and SAT thresholds cited by Willingham in her report.

The office even used Willingham's timeframe of 2004-2012 and used CNN's definition of literacy and found 97 percent of those student-athletes met the reading threshold. The office also found 90 percent of student-athletes in basketball and football also met CNN's literacy threshold.

Dean pointed to the difference in the school's findings against what Willingham reported, and said the CNN report was inaccurate.

"I'm not playing some kind of trick with this data," Dean told the AP. "This isn't marginal. This is really quite central to the claims that have been made. And I take no joy in this. I think it's very sad, actually."

UNC has also barred Willingham from accessing school data unless re requests are approved by the school's internal review board (IRB). She maintains her report is "100 percent accurate" and also stated she intends to continue her work even if she has to go through the IRB.

"The gap in academic preparedness between profit sport athletes and students at NCAA (Division I) institutions perpetuates educational inequality," she told the AP. "Until we acknowledge the problem, and fix it, many of our athletes, specifically men's basketball and football players are getting nothing in exchange for their special talents."

Willingham has also maintained that the school has not tried to hamper her investigation at any point and that she has worked on an interpersonal level with several of the athletes implicated in her report.

"My data is 100 percent correct," Willingham told the AP. "In addition, I worked with the overwhelming majority of the students in the data set on reading and writing skills between 2004 and 2010.

"It's interesting that my IRB was pulled and I was told that I could not talk about it until it was resolved, meanwhile the provost is allowed to discuss the findings. That is what is truly erroneous about all of this - and at a research university - wow. At UNC we protect our brand at all costs."

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