Ghost Students Are Creating an 'Agonizing' Problem For California Colleges (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0177378525
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/08/012245/ghost-students-are-creating-an-agonizing-problem-for-california-colleges
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ghost-students-creating-problem-calif-colleges-20311708.php
> When the pandemic upended the world of higher education, Robin Pugh, a professor at City College of San Francisco, began to see one puzzling problem in her online courses: Not everyone was a real student. Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she'd normally drop three to five from her roster who don't start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. But during the current spring semester, Pugh said that number more than doubled when she had to cut 11 students. It's a strange new reality that has left her baffled. "It's really unclear to me, and beyond the scope of my knowledge, how this is really happening," she said. "Is it organized crime? Is it something else? Everybody has lots of theories."
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> Some of the disengaged students in Pugh's courses are what administrators and cybersecurity experts say are "ghost students," and they've been a [1]growing problem for community colleges , particularly since the shift to online instruction during the pandemic. These "ghost students" are artificially intelligent agents or bots that pose as real students in order to steal millions of dollars of financial aid that could otherwise go to actual humans. And as colleges grapple with the problem, Pugh and her colleagues have been tasked with a new and "frustrating" task of weeding out these bots and trying to decide who's a real person.
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> The process, she said, takes her focus off teaching the real students. "I am very intentional about having individualized interaction with all of my students as early as possible," Pugh said. "That included making phone calls to people, sending email messages, just a lot of reaching out individually to find out 'Are you just overwhelmed at work and haven't gotten around to starting the class yet? Or are you not a real person?'" Financial aid fraud is not new, but it's been on the rise in California's community colleges, Cal Matters reported, with scammers stealing more than $10 million in 2024, more than double the amount in 2023.
Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, the president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges and a professor at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, said the bots have been enrolling in courses since around early 2021.
"It's been going on for quite some time," she said. "I think the reason that you're hearing more about it is that it's getting harder and harder to combat or to deal with." A spokesperson for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office estimates that 0.21% of the system's financial aid was fraudulently disbursed. However, the office was unable to estimate the percentage of fraudulent attempts attributed to bots.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ghost-students-creating-problem-calif-colleges-20311708.php
Previously: (Score:3)
See also: [1]https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/17/1611216/bot-students-siphon-millions-in-financial-aid-from-us-community-colleges
Re: (Score:2)
So would all degrees be free? What if we can't use more lawyers, chiropractors?
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> So would all degrees be free? What if we can't use more lawyers, chiropractors?
The way it should work in my not so humble opinion is that community college is free no matter what your degree program is, but all degree programs would also include a minimum reasonable proportion of transferable units. And if you want a free four year degree, it has to be something which will increase employability.
California already has a list of such degrees. They are called Local Programs which Increase Employability, or LPIEs. If you google "LPIE list" you can easily get the spreadsheet which lists a
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> Keep in mind that before we decided to create a student loan crisis — thanks, Biden! finally something terrible that he actually did,
I can't interpret your statement here.
The student load crisis far predates Biden. Here's a graph, for example: [1]https://knowablemagazine.org/d... [knowablemagazine.org]
Roughly a linear rise in debt starting in 2001.
Biden's role was to attempt to deal with it, which was mostly unsuccessful.
[1] https://knowablemagazine.org/docserver/fulltext/10.1146/knowable-092923-1/g-student-loan-debt-us.png
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> What if we can't use more lawyers
What do you mean, "if"?
The market seems to handle this pretty well, although we currently overproduce in a number of areas, such as music, English, creative writing, journalism, psychology, exercise science...and underproduce in nursing, teachers, mental health counselors, certain types of engineers....If there is not a good job market for lawyers, for example, then many students will study something else.
Europe generally has free tuition, and they don't seem to have massive overproduction in profession
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They should have a reasonable cost as a deterrent for signing up unnecessarily. Education is a net benefit to society, in my opinion. Education shouldn't be considered solely as a means to a career. Higher education is what should enable people to be capable voters, serve in local government, and be ready to step in in case society collapses after a massive extraterrestrial EMP wipes out all technology.
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Engineers boost GDP, lawyers decrease it. That's not one of the reasons there isn't Federal student aid for law school, but it should be.
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"In the old days college was just as expensive as now" Considering that since 1979, inflation has risen 300%... but college costs have risen as high as 1300%... How do you think college was "just as expensive then" when the facts say otherwise? Its amazing you're pushing socialism by pushing... lies? (Is there any other way to push socialism?)
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> Considering that since 1979, inflation has risen 300%... but college costs have risen as high as 1300%... How do you think college was "just as expensive then" when the facts say otherwise?
Have college costs risen to 1300%, or college prices? Some people seem to use these words interchangeably, when they are not interchangeable.
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> Have college costs risen to 1300%, or college prices? Some people seem to use these words interchangeably, when they are not interchangeable
Sure, they are not interchangable, but they've both gone up. On the cost side, employee costs (which is a huge part of providing an education) have skyrocketed, particularly in providing health insurance benefits. On the pricing side, many states cover a much smaller portion of the cost, so prices have had to increase to cover that growing gap. Many public institutions that were once state created and state supported are now essentially state located, given how little many states contribute to public colleg
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> "In the old days college was just as expensive as now" Considering that since 1979, inflation has risen 300%... but college costs have risen as high as 1300%... How do you think college was "just as expensive then" when the facts say otherwise? Its amazing you're pushing socialism by pushing... lies? (Is there any other way to push socialism?)
I don't know how to compare how expensive college was long ago, but it was definitely more affordable. Four decades ago, it was possible to work a part-time job and go to college at the same time. That's no longer possible.
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>> "In the old days college was just as expensive as now" Considering that since 1979, inflation has risen 300%... but college costs have risen as high as 1300%... How do you think college was "just as expensive then" when the facts say otherwise? Its amazing you're pushing socialism by pushing... lies? (Is there any other way to push socialism?)
> I don't know how to compare how expensive college was long ago, but it was definitely more affordable. Four decades ago, it was possible to work a part-time job and go to college at the same time. That's no longer possible.
You can get an education at a low cost if you try. Community colleges are very low cost. Some states offer free college tuition to in-state students. Then as now joining a branch of the armed forces can get you a free education. There is lots of need and merit based aid available. Online education is available. You may not be able to afford to be a resident student at the college of your choice but you can definitely get an education at a price you can afford.
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Tuition free??? I think you mean "taxpayer funded" college.
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Citations needed.
Maybe require payment before enrolling? (Score:4, Insightful)
This problem has been around a long time. To get people in the door, colleges don't require payment until a couple of weeks after the class has started. Their hope is that the students will want to keep coming, and pay. Require payment before starting class, and the AI problem will quickly go away.
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The real solution is to require in person registration of some sort. Verify you're a human. Requiring payments helps as well as it ties you to credit cards and the like but AI hasn't created human passing robots yet. (Yet, being the key word)
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At the very least, automated ID video verifications are something I hate but would help reduce costs. My mortgage company's web site is half broken and they don't support real 2FA. They realized my cell phone number is Voip and now they can't seem to fix it. Multiple times, I have had to do a little song and dance by uploading a photo of my ID along with a video selfie. This is a stupid substitute for just supporting FIDO keys or even just Passkeys, but a fine option for one-time verification of identit
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That's great, unless the course is online-only.
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Well, since the problem is financial assistance fraud, wouldn't it make more sense to require in-person applications for aid?
Though for all we know, someone with a stack of fake IDs is going in-person to register for classes and aid already. In which case the only way to prevent fraud is for financial aid to not hand over any money until a student has shown up at class. Or maybe better, once they go to the register at the campus bookstore with a stack of textbooks.
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> The real solution is to require in person registration of some sort. Verify you're a human.
Exactly. The problem is online courses, where you can't tell a human being from a bot.
If courses were in person this would not be a problem.
That's not why colleges wait for payment (Score:2)
At least not real colleges. The reason colleges do that is because students are often scraping together the money at the last minute when a scholarship goes through and takes a little too long to pay out. Or if a relative comes up with a little bit of money.
Requiring payment before classes wouldn't solve it either because the entire point of the scam is we dispersed the money to the students and they are supposed to take it to the university. We do this because we wanted to stop subsidizing college.
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> 80% was from the government and 20% was tuition paid by students. It's now 70/30 in the opposite direction. 70% student 30% government.
And this somehow seems to cost more for everyone. It is the main cause of rising tuition also. Instead of being taxpayer funded, you might be on the hook for 20 years paying back loans.
Automated money (Score:2)
is hardly "baffling." It could be a single person running it all.
Actual presence check can sort it out (Score:3)
Have students arrive at the start of the course and periodically further on. Those, who are not attending never were there for that, and shouldn't get into the actual registers.
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That simply does not work when you advertise a class as "online" and you allow people from 400km away (still in the same state/province at times) to enroll with the understanding that there will not be a requirement to attend a class in person.
Re: "Actual humans" (Score:2)
"Actual students" can put at most one butt in a classroom chair. The 'bots might be enrolling hundreds, for the benefit of one human.
And if you are not showing up for class (like some frat bros don't) I'd argue that you are not actual and are taking up a seat that a real student could use.
Reimbursement? (Score:2)
At my company, if you get a good grade you are reimbursed.
Fine, *I* will ask the naive question (Score:3)
> steal millions of dollars of financial aid
Why are you giving them any money at all, before you even know who they are?
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Because it's a government program, working as intended.
see? (Score:2)
This is why you don't turn off the containment unit.
If the solution was a snake it would bite you. (Score:2)
This is really simple to fix. Want student aide? Attend a mandatory in person interview. Sure some people might flake anyway, but you won’t have armies of bots stealing money. It’s much easier, and harder to catch, unleash software powered by computers than actual people.
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Sadly, there is a simple workaround for that. A fake ID and a couple of hours on site. One person could spend a few days going around to different campuses and register a dozen fake students for aid. It's a simple short-con.
agonizing news (Score:2)
> "I am very intentional about having individualized interaction with all of my students as early as possible,"
great. during that individualized interaction that you want to have anyway, your first assessment will be if they are a real person who really wants to study, and if they're not then you drop them. which is the "agonizing problem" here?
The mistake I see here is... (Score:2)
...so many posts considering the value of college as the issue.
TFA states -plainly- that this is mostly (?) financial aid fraud. Not about deciding not to attend, but the tools used to commit the fraud are very, very good now.
The solutions are not so difficult, many industries have faced this before.
How do the ghost shudents make money? (Score:2)
Financial aid would generally be less than the cost of the course, which someone still has to pay. How does getting a bot to take a class for you just to apply for and get financial aid netting you money?
I'm not following the scheme here. If anything, the school / teacher stands to gain by doing something like this - assuming they forge the identities of the bots and leave the bill with those suckers.
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They eventually get dropped from the class. I don't think they intend to publish a howto.
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Oh no, not at all. The aid is very often more than the cost of courses and material, on the assumption that the student will need food, gas, a computer, etc. And, often provided as a lump sum at the beginning of the semester. Or at least that was the case 20 years ago.
Not handing over a lump sum at the offset, but crediting the registration and book fees first, then handing over the rest in person may help. As would identity verification plus requiring "Real ID", as they have to be using stolen or fa
Dead Internet Theory Again (Score:2)
Bots outnumber actual people now tending towards 100% bot traffic.
It's dead, Jim.
California (Score:3)
Interesting that it is 'California' colleges, might that be because at the core here what we have is an identity management problem, and CA seems to be categorically opposed to any form of strong identity capability?
How much of this fraud is directly related to someone in the state, not wanting to "disenfranchise" some illegal aliens by requiring proper documentation?
Note that does not have to imply or require its the illegals doing the fraud, just the weak identity controls to accommodate them enabling it.
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I suspect that you're on to something there. This could really only be happening if they aren't verifying the IDs of the incoming students, and the only reasons I can think of to not do so are laziness/incompetence or a policy decision from on-high. If it's the former, then there is an easy fix that they would be implementing now. Which I'd assume would be prominently mentioned in the article, so...
More proof 'online' anything doesn't work. (Score:2)
Hold real classes out here in the real world, bots can't show up for that. And you get real face to face teaching time just like the teacher wanted.
Why is ... (Score:2)
... a professor worried about this stuff? Shouldn't the college administration be handling it? Teach the class, even if some people are just lurking to audit it (I've done this). And then skip over the work submitted by non-enrolled students, as determined by administration.
Certainly, no financial aid should be handed out to people that don't show up in person at some point.
This could open up a whole new business area for notaries. Live in a remote location and need to establish your validity? Show up in
how many are just in for the piece of paper just d (Score:2)
how many are just in for the piece of paper just doing the bear min to pass the class?
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According to the summary, this is talking about people (or AIs) who start a class and then *drop* it. These people (or AIs) aren't "doing the bare minimum"--they aren't getting credit or passing.
Re:how many are just in for the piece of paper jus (Score:4, Informative)
Correct. They applying for financial aid, usually via identity theft. They get signed up and stay long enough to get the excess financial paid out, then they leave. Community colleges are rather inexpensive compared to others.
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None. This isn't about students doing the minimum. This is about fake enrolments.