The state agrees that there are 65,000 cases of ghost students in the California community college system but some say there may be as many as 180,000 ghost students. This is costing the colleges millions in lost dollars while preventing real students from receiving the education they desire.
Professor Kim Rich believes that there may be some classes with 50% of the students who are fake.
Fake bots are now signing up for California community colleges, seemingly to get financial aid dollars for her online courses. That is money that was lost and will never be repaid. A professor of criminal justice at Pierce College, Kim Rich said about a third of her class were fake students. She said some classes had 5% fake students, others 10%, and some had 50%. It’s costing millions of dollars. Rich discovered students were submitting plagiarized work and that led her to search for the students via google. That’s when she discovered they were fake students.
CEO and founder of OpentheBooks.com, Adam Andrzejewski, was on a local news program where he discussed the situation in California.
Once you’re enrolled you’re eligible for federal and state student aid…They’ve [the colleges] have known about this for at least a year and have moved too slow for too long.
Some students have the names of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. These fraudsters are costing the state and country millions.