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Community colleges across the US are contending with the rise of fake “bot” students, who use AI-generated coursework to fraudulently claim state and federal student aid, according to an investigative piece by The Voice of San Diego.
Elizabeth Smith, a professor at Southwestern College, a community college in Chula Vista, California, found that just 14 out of the 104 students originally enrolled in her class were real people. “I’m not teaching, I’m playing a cop now,” she says.
The trend reportedly started in earnest in 2021, when pandemic lockdowns pushed most community college classes online, while more people than ever took the opportunity to sign up for online courses.
The investigation highlighted data from the California State Chancellor’s Office, which estimated a quarter of community college applicants were bots in 2024, and that the bot army swindled the state and federal government out of $13 million in student aid in the 12 months ending in April.
It’s not uncommon for students to use tools like ChatGPT to cheat on their coursework, and this can make these AI-using fake students even harder to spot. A recent survey of 24 of the United Kingdom's most highly ranked universities found that 20% of students openly admitted to copy-pasting directly from AI bots. And as community colleges accept almost everyone, this can further intensify these risks.
Kevin Alston, a business professor at Southwestern, claimed he's seen instances of scammers using the student IDs and names of former students who had transferred to other institutions to re-enroll in the school and collect student aid using their identities.
Some academics say the trend is disrupting their ability to educate students properly. Caree Lesh, a counselor and the president of Southwestern College’s Academic Senate, told Voice of San Diego, “It’s really hard to create a sense of community and help students who are struggling when you’re spending the first couple of weeks trying to figure out who’s a bot.”
To combat the issue, Southwestern College has launched an Inauthentic Enrollment Mitigation Taskforce to weed out fake applications. Meanwhile, the California Community Colleges system has partnered with tech companies like ID.me to help with authentication during the enrollment process.