Ghost Students 101
Definition of a “ghost student”.
What is a fake or fraudulent student identity created to enroll in courses and collect financial aid?
The type of technology increasingly used to create ghost students.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
This kind of verification is now stricter for financial aid applicants.
What is ID verification? Or ID.me?
The ways ghost students affect currently enrolled students.
What is filling up class rosters, draining financial aid resources, and slower response times from staff?
In this past year alone, fraudsters have taken this much in federal aid.
What is $10 million?
The ways bots can mimic real students?
How do they auto-fill applications, generate fake essays, and interact via email?
The federal department which launched stricter measures in May 2025.
What is the U.S. Department of Education?
The ways that ghost students harm colleges.
What is inflating enrollment data and causing staff to be overworked?
The reason community colleges are more vulnerable to ghost students.
Why do community colleges have open-access admissions and extensive online offerings?
An indication of potentially fraudulent behavior.
What is enrolling and withdrawing multiple times at different nearby institutions?
The percentage of cases that current fraud detection efforts are capturing.
What is 85%?
The concerns that students have raised about stricter verification methods.
How do they create barriers for unhoused, incarcerated, or undocumented students?
The types of aid do scammers gain from enrolling ghost students
What is federal, state, and local aid (for student tuition, fees, and/or textbook supports)?
AI tools can detect whether lots of applications are coming from the same BLANK.
What are IP addresses?
The primary goal of stricter ID verification.
What is protecting taxpayer dollars?
This college system was forced to launch a large scale response to ghost students in 2024.
What is California Community Colleges?