The Daily Mail reported that artificial intelligence has infiltrated California colleges in a sophisticated financial aid fraud scheme, particularly in virtual classes. Many of these passive enrollees amount to AI-generated “ghost students.”
Community colleges appear to be targets for this scheme because they have high acceptance rates.
CalMatters reported that over the last 12 months state colleges have doled out $10 million in federal funds and $3 million to fake students.
So far this year, schools have already given out $3 million in federal aid and $700,000 in state funds.
“This is a jarring increase from the period between September 2021 and December 2023, when fake students reportedly drew in more than $5 million in federal money and $1.5 million in state funds,” the Daily Mail wrote.
Professors now have the added challenge of ensuring that the students they are supposed to teach are actually human.
City College San Francisco Robin Pugh said, “I am very intentional about having individualized interaction with all of my students as early as possible.”
Pugh added, “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?”
This spring, Pugh said she had to remove 11 students, most of them AI bots, from the classroom.
CalMatters said that fraudulent students are becoming more common.
Twenty percent of 2021 college applicants were likely fake, and by January 2024 the number of fake applicants had risen to 25 percent.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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