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Committee weighs enrollment fraud bill after colleges report rise in "ghost" students
Summary
Senate File 2,703 would create an enrollment fraud working group to combat so-called ghost-student schemes that use bots or stolen identities to enroll at scale and capture federal aid.The committee heard testimony from Century College instructors, Minnesota State security staff and others about the scale, operational burden and detection limits.
Senate File 2,703, sponsored by Senator Gustafson, would create an enrollment fraud working group tasked with developing statewide strategies to detect and deter "ghost student" schemes that exploit financial aid systems.
Joe Haker, a history instructor at Century College, told the committee that in summer 2023 he observed roughly 15% of his students were duplicate or false enrollments and that one colleague found 30 of 60 students in an online course were ghosts. "Sometimes the fraud is blatant and obvious, but a lot of people who actually manage to get into our classes now have become more sophisticated," Haker said, describing the additional workload for faculty…
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