Ghost students: The new enrollment fraud scheme Minnesota two-year colleges are fighting

[question everything]

(snip)

Officials from Minnesota State are now warning community and technical colleges to look out for ghost students who can pocket hundreds or thousands in financial aid dollars before schools figure out they’re not real students. This month, administrators and instructors testified at the State Capitol for a Senate hearing of a bill to create a statewide working group to address the enrollment fraud. Joe Haker, a history instructor at Century College in White Bear Lake, said at the hearing that he found out in 2023 that 15% of his students were “basically an organized crime ring.”

(snip)

Some of the fraudsters are local but most live in other countries, officials said. They enroll in online, asynchronous classes — courses where students can access lessons and activities whenever they want — primarily at two-year colleges, with no intent of learning or earning a degree. They try to make it through the early days of a course without being found out, doing the bare minimum in classwork until financial aid money is disbursed, usually about 10 days into the semester.

(snip)

When a student receives financial aid, the money goes through the school first and then what’s left, if anything, is disbursed to the student’s bank account or sent as a check. This may include grant funding from the state or federal government to cover tuition, student housing or meal plans. Some grants are specifically intended to cover living expenses; that money goes through the school as well and then to students. The same process applies if a student takes out loans.

(snip)

Haker, the history instructor, worries that because of the fraud, asynchronous online classes may no longer be seen as a viable option for colleges to offer. That would be bad because his students who work nights or who are single parents need classes they can complete on their own time, he said.


https://www.startribune.com/ghost-students-the-new-enrollment-fraud-scheme-minnesota-two-year-colleges-are-fighting/601329524

[MichMan]

1. Need to claw back $$ from students who fail classes.

Last edited Mon Apr 14, 2025, 09:43 PM - Edit history (1)

[bucolic_frolic]

2. I gotta say we're reaching a point where everyone has to question everything

I wonder if all this computing power and its ability to synthesize information quickly is enabling the crooks.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Of course it is. As William Gibson likes to say, "The street finds its own uses for things."

Every advancement that helps civilians can also help armies; every advancement that helps honest people can also help criminals. The big difference is that criminals are looking harder for new opportunities than even the greediest venture capitalist, and are attuned to recognize them ASAP; their whole methodology relies on being quicker to realize that an opportunity even exists before their victims do. Governments, and even legitimate businesses, are slower to realize there's an exploitable loophole inherent in every innovation.