By Abby Sigler, Marrion Cruz, Tom Whitehead and John Adkins
At a time when the college’s financial stability can only be resuscitated by an increase in enrollment, a record 10,000 ghosts have clogged class registrations.
With the number of fraudulent student accounts having more than doubled this semester, faculty members are predicting matters will only get worse.
“This year is such a critical year to be maximizing enrollment, and we’re not really in a position to be doing outreach and encouraging students to come to City College when we have this other issue preventing students from getting seats,” Maura Devlin-Clancy said.
Delvin-Clancy is a Computer Networking and IT instructor who currently teaches five online classes and one in-person class. She estimates she has interacted with at least 60 ghost students this spring semester alone.
Faculty still risk their class being cut after the semester has started if enrollment is too low. Many courses with full registration lists were met with empty desks on the first day of the semester. Now, a full enrollment at City College causes more anxiety than relief. “Your thinking goes down this hole of like, what if they’re all ghost students?” Devlin-Clancy said.
Unmasking the Unknown
“Ghost” or “straw” students are fraudulent accounts in college application and class registration systems created using bots, stolen identities, or AI-generated profiles. The creators of these accounts are located globally and range from individual scammers to organized crime rings, primarily attempting to access dot edu email addresses and defraud financial aid.
According to Guillermo Villanueva, Dean of Financial Aid and Special Programs, City College and other community colleges are prime targets because of their open enrollment policies. “Pretty much anyone can register for a course in the community college system because it’s open. So that’s where the biggest problem has come in.”
Villanueva also noted that ghost students have been traced to scammers operating worldwide. “We’ve seen fraudulent activity from Eastern European countries, Africa and some Asian countries,” he said.
Ghost student fraud siphons millions in financial aid dollars meant for real students. Scammers especially covet Pell Grants, which can provide up to $7,395 per student. Local grants, such as Free City grants that cover $46 per unit, are also at risk.
California community colleges lost more than $10 million in financial aid fraud in 2024, KCRA reported.
Haunted Halls
The college revealed that over 10,000 ghost students were caught registering for classes this spring, compared to roughly 4,000 last fall. Departments heavily targeted include Computer Networking and Information Technology; Behavioral Science; Business; and Kinesiology. Introductory courses, which typically lack prerequisites, are especially attractive to scammers.
Prospective and current City College students had a tough time registering for their classes due to this increase in enrollment fraud. One Reddit user posted to R/AskSF wondering why “every single CCSF class [they] wanted to take — from ‘fluffy’ ones to ‘academic’ ones — are full and have full waitlists too.”
Students who showed up on their first day, uncertain of their status in their courses, worked with professors and the registration office to get officially added. Faculty were expected to identify and cull fraudulent accounts from their rosters as soon as possible to ensure real students were provided spots instead.
In a survey conducted by their union, some faculty members reported dedicating upwards of 60 hours this semester to dealing with ghost students and their fallout.
“I had to try to suss through who or what was a real person before letting them into the course. I spent more time working on that than I did actually engaging with my authentic students,” remarked Communication Studies Professor and Academic Senate President Alexis Litzky.
Teachers who want to be inclusive and allow grace for late adds are instead forced to remain suspicious of their students.
“Our usual practice is welcoming and encouraging students. We shouldn’t have to be doubting a student’s intention. This is putting teachers in a hard position they had never signed up for,” Devlin-Clancy said.
“Unless we can address this, any of the outreach efforts to bring students in seems like you’re encouraging students to come at a time when it’s really not very friendly,” she continued.
Despite increased awareness and mitigation efforts, fraudsters outpace detection systems by leveraging AI and evolving tactics. Resources meant to address cybersecurity have struggled to keep up, leaving schools like City College in a constant game of catch-up.
“This semester is the worst semester that we’ve ever had, and so far, we haven’t seen anything concrete in terms of solutions,” said Business Professor and Faculty Union Vice President Robin Pugh. “It’s ever-evolving, but that doesn’t mean nothing should be done.”
Discussions on the faculty union’s online forum allude to the expectation of an increase in ghost students every semester. So far, it appears scammers’ evolving strategy is that the more a college is overwhelmed, the more bot accounts will slip through the cracks.
Some administrators have also raised concerns about “sleeper” accounts — fraudulent profiles that were successfully enrolled in previous semesters and could be reactivated without detection. While the college has no immediate plans to require existing students to reapply, these accounts remain a potential blind spot as fraudsters adapt to detection measures.
Bracing the System
According to Villanueva, “The college distributes the first of the Pell money within a week of approval by the Department of Education, and the rest after the enrollment census is complete,” making these funds an attractive target for fraudsters.
City College contracts with loan payment processing platform Nelnet to distribute grant money and mitigate fraud. As part of their agreement with the Department of Education, Nelnet and City College must maintain monitoring procedures to ensure funds go to eligible recipients or face potential sanctions.
Nelnet has been instrumental in detecting fraudulent patterns in financial aid distribution. Villanueva detailed how “they were able to identify a lot of that money was going to the same reloadable card, and it was coming from different people, different names.”
On March 20, Chancellor Mitch Bailey and Vice-Chancellor David Yee presented their plan to tackle the ghost student problem at a Board of Trustees meeting. The presentation remained high-level as they believe fraudsters may be paying close attention to the college’s strategies and adjusting their scams accordingly.
Vice Chancellor Yee detailed the school’s initial response in December last year when the ghost student numbers began to spike. He described how they added additional filtering capabilities to flag potentially fraudulent accounts, increased manual intervention by the registration office, and shortened the verification period for flagged student accounts from seven to three days.
As this issue impacts community colleges across California, the administration has been reaching out to other schools to understand how they have dealt with the problem. “We were able to talk to Ohlone and their staff to find out how they did it. We’ve talked to San Mateo, and we’re exploring other colleges,” Yee said.
El Camino Community College trustees recently approved a $54,000 subscription purchase of Lightleap, an AI fraud detection platform.
At the meeting, trustees expressed apprehension over how these strategies may affect accessibility for legitimate students. In response, Chancellor Bailey shared an analogy:
“Everyone’s welcome at the house. We want everyone to come visit us at our house. But we can’t leave the front door open unguarded all the time, so we’ve got to do things that help protect the house.”
On April 9, administrators sent out an email outlining a portfolio of approaches to limiting the number of ghost students for the upcoming registration periods.
These strategies range from dropping students who fail to pay for their courses on time to withholding student ID numbers until identification has been verified. The email also mentioned leveraging “current tools” at the college.
Despite the ongoing conversations, faculty still feel there has been no urgency in the college’s response.
“I didn’t get a sense that there was a clear deadline or a solution. It was more like the start of thinking about a solution,” Devlin-Clancy explained.
“We have serious business to take care of, and this issue is just making that difficult to focus on. If the admin could make this a priority, it would really go a long way to helping us have a brighter future.”
Editor’s note: In our next issue, The Guardsman delves deeper into the uncanny behavior of ghost students in the classroom, and what students can do to stand out to get the courses they need.