Students, did you wonder why you were required to attend class on the first day or would be immediately dropped if you didn’t? It’s because, according to California Community Colleges, there’s a not-insignificant chance you don’t exist. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent transition to online courses, community colleges in California have seen a sharp uptick in fraudulent enrollments — with GCC as no exception.
A fraudulent enrollment is when a person enrolls in classes in bad faith — typically through the use of automated “bot” programs in combination with stolen identities — in order to receive a monetary benefit. For example, someone might enroll in order to get a student email address with no intention of attending any of their classes. They could then use this email to receive free trials from online services. Commonly, they’re in pursuit of financial aid; fraudsters collect up to $7,600 in government Pell Grants then vanish, leaving the classrooms with an empty seat.
Specifically, 2021-2023 was a particularly volatile time for colleges, with many transitioning to always-online courses alongside the rise of text-generating “AI” programs such as ChatGPT. Fraudsters could now convincingly submit one or two assignments by “prompting” the software for convincing-looking text; since video-classes let them obscure their identity by disabling or lacking cameras, it became possible to create the appearance of an invested student and seemingly legitimize their false enrollment. Megan Torrey-Payne, a psychology instructor at GCC, spoke of the discrepancy. “I haven’t experienced too many issues with fake enrollments recently. Most of my classes are in person now … when I was teaching remotely several years ago, there were a huge number [of false enrollments].”
When funds are disbursed to bad actors, those funds necessarily aren’t able to be allocated to students in need. As reported by CalMatters, almost $6.5 million was stolen from federal and state governments via enrollment fraud – money that could have paid for student transit, or meals, or textbooks. Alongside the material disadvantage, enrollment fraud deprives students of classes they might otherwise need to take. “It’s frustrating because when the class fills with fake enrollments, real students who want the spot can’t get it,” Torrey-Payne said. “Sometimes they end up in other classes or even other schools that have openings.”
Enrollment for GCC’s Spring 2025 semester opens again in early December. Bad actors shouldn’t stop anyone from engaging with the financial aid office if needed, located on the third floor of the Sierra Vista building.
Morgan Rodberg can be reached at [email protected].