Community colleges in California are facing a growing crisis of "bot students" enrolling in online courses to fraudulently collect financial aid. An estimated 25% of applicants to California's community colleges are bots, with over 900,000 fraudulent applications submitted between September 2021 and January 2024. These bots pose as real students, often using AI to submit coursework and stay enrolled long enough to receive financial aid.
The financial impact is significant, with over $11 million paid out to fake students in 2024, more than double the previous year. This includes over $5 million in federal Pell grants and nearly $1.5 million in state and local aid given to scammers since fall 2021.
Faculty members are transforming into detectives, scrutinizing assignments and enrollment behavior to identify fake students. They're looking for red flags like odd language in emails and AI-generated coursework. However, the crackdown on bot students can sometimes backfire, causing real students to be mistakenly dropped from classes, leading to delayed graduation and lost opportunities.
Artificial intelligence is making it easier for scammers to evade detection, with bots submitting gibberish assignments and using stolen identities. This has forced colleges to invest heavily in fraud detection and cybersecurity, with California allocating over $125 million since 2022.
To combat this issue, colleges are exploring new strategies, including a new version of the community college application portal with enhanced cybersecurity and a software tool called ID.Me that verifies student identities. However, privacy experts have raised concerns about potential biases and errors in such tools.
