The two professors have built national reputations as experts in criminology. Taylor and Worrall are routinely cited by media organizations, including The Washington Post, USA Today, The News and others, in the coverage of crimes such as the 2018 Austin bombings and the police shooting death of Botham Jean in Dallas.

Taylor helped found The Caruth Police Institute of Dallas, a leadership development and officer training program affiliated with the Dallas Police Department. He also has taught at the Institute for Law Enforcement Administration in Plano.

Those connections gave him an inside track to recruit students for the UTD master’s program. The program’s policies he helped create allowed students at both institutes to swap work there for up to nine hours of credit at UTD; the idea was that the coursework was virtually equivalent. Worrall also had worked for Caruth. Cohen has worked at the Plano institute since 2016.

Taylor’s and Worrall’s policies also gave them and other faculty members financial incentives to keep the program running. In addition to their salaries, instructors could get stipends of up to $8,000 for each course they taught. And 20 percent of the program’s revenue would be split between Taylor’s and Marquart’s offices “to be used at their discretion,’’ the policies said.

The policies made no mention of how grades would be assigned.

It’s unclear whether UTD administrators examined the instructors’ ties to the institutes or even knew about them. A school spokesman said they do not comment on individual employees.

“We specifically asked why it wasn’t a conflict of interest, and it was never answered,” said Nadine Connell, an associate professor within the criminology department who had concerns about the issues.

Cohen told students from Caruth and the Plano institute that for certain criminology classes at UTD, they wouldn’t need to do any work but would still receive credit and top grades, UT System investigators found.

UTD says its top administrators and a dean who is required to approve such credit transfers knew nothing of the arrangement.

At least four graduates told The News they were told they would receive credit even if they did not attend classes because they completed work at one of the two institutes.

Lake Dallas Police Chief Dan Carolla acknowledged receiving the credit, but stressed he found the overall program challenging and rewarding. Asked whether he thought it was strange that students would receive A’s as part of the credit transfer process, Carolla declined to comment.

Cohen told investigators the credit transfers were the main recruiting tool for the degree, according to the report. Over the years, the degree program brought in more than $1.8 million at about $22,000 per student, according to records the university provided The News.

Taylor earned $39,000 in "stipend/supplement" pay, and Worrall earned $75,461, according to budget records. Cohen did not receive any stipend or supplemental pay, at times drawing her salary directly from the program, according to the records.

Experts say school programs sharply focused on revenue growth can be vulnerable to abuses, particularly those solely funded with tuition dollars.

“Any program that is exclusively tuition driven, and you’re trying to attract as many students as possible, then clearly that is potentially corrupting,’’ said Gary Pavela, a lawyer and past president of the International Association of Academic Integrity. “It’s very tempting to be willfully ignorant about the kind of judgment that we’re seeing here.”