Taxpayer money flushed down the drain by community college “ghost students”
There's a new thorn in California colleges' side: students cluttering class rosters who—and here's the catch—don't exist. Fraudulent or “ghost” students are popping up all around CA, and they're created to finagle financial aid funds. College admins are struggling to keep up with enrollment deluges, and often mistakenly, unnecessarily expand class offerings when sections are over capacity. From the SF Chronicle.
[Dr. Richard] Valicenti’s name is among the stolen identities used in thousands of fraudulent attempts to enroll in community colleges in California and across the country since classes shifted online during the pandemic. The aim is to steal financial aid.
Fake enrollments also crowd out legitimate students and create hours of work for colleges trying to eliminate “ghost students.” Colleges that disburse grants to fraudsters are on the hook to repay the feds.
Today, about 20% of California’s community college applications are scams: more than 460,000 of the 2.3 million requests to the state’s online application system since July alone, says the state Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the 116 campuses. Community colleges are required to accept any student in the state with a high school diploma, and a Social Security number is not required to apply.
The system’s screening software blocked just half of the fraudsters, while the rest slipped through to try to enroll in online classes, then use their bogus student status to seek financial aid — at which point they must submit a Social Security number.
Enrollment fraud surged during the COVID crisis, alongside new opportunities for anyone in possession of a stolen identity and a criminal mind. Students no longer had to show up in person, and often still don’t.
Pell grants, the federal college subsidies for needy students, have long tempted fraudsters. But the money became easier to steal when the U.S. Department of Education stopped verifying family income during the pandemic, a waiver expected to remain in place until the next award cycle.
Although the state’s software has caught more than half of the fraudulent admissions applications since July, that still left about 200,000 sham applications.
“We’ve worked really hard to close obvious— and less than obvious— routes for people to pretend to be from the United States and pretend to be from California,” said John Hetts, an executive vice chancellor with the state. But because so many phony applications make it through, “all colleges have to deal with this.”
This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the whole thing here.
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