I'm a prof at a community college and I encountered this last semester. I was teaching an online class of 30 and 3-4 were definitely "fake" students. A college had about half her students turn out to be "fake."
Students had to do discussion board posts and these students responses all had html formatting as if they were indented replies from an email chain. The clincher was one of them posted in the introduction message board, "Hello, I am a student in [insert city] and I'm studying..."
We had been warned that these "students" were coming because we are part of a system of schools and the schools earlier in the alphabet had encountered it in the semesters before us. So the school had contracted with some id verification system and those students got kicked out pretty quickly.
Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.
This is the first-order, emotional reaction, yes, but policy should be made based on its full effects, not just its sales pitch's popularity with first-order-emoting voters.
Well, the problem is obvious in hindsight, and perhaps even in foresight. Giving out free money attracts these scammers, who crowd real students out of not only the aid money, but also the actual class. So the net effect is to make it harder to access community college, not easier.
Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to avoid the scammers if they limited first time students to in-person classes.
It's not about whether money frees up time-that's obvious. That argument could be used to justify handing out money to literally anyone. The issue is this aid is easily gamed, as the article shows, and strong incentives to pursue education already exist, like better job prospects. Not to mention that it's hard to justify asking less-educated workers to subsidize the upward mobility of those who may soon out-earn them.
>> If attending these classes was even just free, this wouldn't be a problem. Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous.
> Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.
I think the idea would be if someone's getting paid to go to school so they don't have to work, then they should go to in-person classes. Online classes probably shouldn't be an option.
If there's profit available and no personal cost (in either time or money), scammers will exploit the program as described ("fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds").
You present hypothetical scenario of up against the reality they getting paid to “attend” online class is a total farce, diluting the value of a diploma or degree from that community college system well also stealing away resources.
I'm mixed. If we lived in a utopian world where money isn't real, I'd agree. Reality is California has major budget issues. Offering the classes for free is already enough in the current climate.
Working while going to school is not uncommon or isolated to California. Full time work while going to school is excessive - but that is also a California COL issue that the state needs to actually tackle. But it gets worse the more they don't address their deficits. Debt begets debt and it always drives up COL.
Not really. I worked various jobs in community college to support myself. Community college is designed around that fact with early morning and late night classes, but these are ONLINE classes. You can’t say that they have to work at that time because there is no time slot
This is the hard part of society. We want nice things but propose anything that can be gamed/scammed for free money and it's instantly shot-down before it even gets off the ground. That, or if by a miracle it launches, is constantly attacked and smeared by politicians using it to get votes from selfish assholes who dont want to share (I learned about sharing in preschool and kindergarten).
Until you solve the primitive animalistic problems of selfishness, greed, and energy conserving laziness, were not going to have nice things. Someone asshole is going to be mad they have to share. Some asshole is going to lie and scam to get as much free shit as they can.
But the numbers mentioned there seem tiny for a federal programme like the Pell Grant. A lot of times it's a matter of scale: a bit of fraud isn't ideal, but entirely manageable, so whatever.
Since then the scale expanded greatly. This is often a problem when you move things online: you're instantly connected with everyone on the world, which also means you're instantly connected with every asshole in the world. And with AI a single asshole can now pretend to be 200 assholes.
The solution is to do less things online and more in person. There are some advantages for some people in doing things online, but it also negatively affects everyone, and in general it just doesn't seem worth it to do everything online. It's not binary: you can do many things online while still requiring some bits in-person (e.g. registration, exams, occasional events).
On one hand, students need to pay for food and rent, so it makes sense. I used loans, grants, scholarships, and financial aid to pay for these expenses myself when I was in school.
On the other hand, maybe the barrier to entry is just waaayyy too low for online community college classes for this to make any sense. Students should have some skin in the game. Maybe students should be required to take a couple in person classes before financial aid can be used for online classes?
I don't think the article was dancing around it though.
> apparently paying students to attend online community college
No, they provide student aid that covers some (it's not much) of low income students' living expenses so that they can actually study and get through college, instead of working fulltime and it taking 2-3 times as long.
It's the same type of financial aid scholarships 4-year universities give out too, and in most/all States.
It is important to not deny people what they need in order to prevent fraudsters from profiting. This fraud is roughly 0.3% of total student aide in California.
No such thing as free education. Just subsidized education. Costs would be pushed entirely to tax payers, many of whom have never attended college themselves. Demand, costs, taxes and state deficits would increase. The incentive for fraud would be pushed up one level to the administration.
We all understand the context of words here. Believe it or not, many people think that the government providing things for its citizens via taxation is a good thing.
This is an example of what I've been thinking about/warning about for several years now: we are entering a post-truth era, where there is increasingly no way to know what is real and what is not.
When I've thought about it, this scenario never occurred to me, but it's a perfect example: we're going to be increasingly unable to know what is "true" in a million different ways, and people are going to exploit that in every way possible.
We're headed for bad times, and I don't know what the answer is, if there is one.
Underlying this is a belief that scamming people is the only way to achieve financial stability, that you need to always be hustling. Teenagers went from idolising actors and musicians (who had agents dealing with the money behind closed doors) to idolising social media creators and influencers who are quite transparent about how the algorithm determines their income. On IndieHackers and MicroConf, it's standard advice that you need to sell your SaaS to businesses because ordinary consumers have no money.
I'm not saying this specific problem isn't solvable, just that it is an example of the problem I'm thinking of.
That said, there are tremendous advantages to supporting remote learning. Simply requiring in person has far greater costs than are being described in the source article.
We've been in a post-truth era for all of human history, since the first hunter-gatherer told a lie to take advantage of someone else.
Which is why we evolved to have exquisite bullshit detectors. They're not perfect, but they're pretty decent.
The answer around what is real and not is the same as it ever was -- does information come from a respected, generally trustworthy source or not? Does it come from a source that might have an agenda, or not? Is it written in a way that seems to gather a lot of evidence in all directions and then explain its conclusion in a plausible way, or is it clearly one-sided?
Bullshit detection, fraud detection, scam detection -- these have always been necessary skills in the world. Sure the scale of misinformation grows, but so do the tools we have to combat it. Email spam was a huge problem, then Gmail filtered it out.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Stop offering online classes and expect students to show up in person. Online education sucks, everyone knows this. Everyone knows that they are making some kind of compromise when teaching or taking an online course. And if people are too poor to drive themselves to college or have to work too much or whatever else, then the state should provide opportunities for them so that they can continue their education. Stop accepting less than this.
I grew up in a very conservative and controlling environment. My ability to study remotely is one of the things that helped lift me out of that environment. I am far from alone in this experience.
I’d have much preferred an in-person education. But I don’t think we should look at the situation as “A is better than B so let’s get rid of B”. B still serves an important purpose and eliminating it will leave people behind.
> then the state should provide opportunities for them so that they can continue their education
I get what you mean, but saying that something _should_ be the case in response to not liking it doesn’t really make sense since that’s the reason it’s popular in the first place. States don’t do this, so that’s part of why online schooling is valuable.
I agree that online school isn’t as quality as in person (in my experience), but it gives a ton of flexibility to those who can’t commute (due to time or cost) and allows those people to possibly get an education when they otherwise couldn’t.
I wonder if there’s a formal term for this kind of argument (would love to know because I see it a lot).
The formal term is irony, because what they are presenting is actually a "Reductio ad absurdum", but they don't understand why their argument is absurd.
If you want a case and point of this, imagine a comedian proposing this idea dripping with sarcasm and clever little jokes, sort of what John Oliver does. The overall absurdity would be obvious, and everyone would understand the suggestion is a bad idea, with a little bit of honey to go with the vinegar.
The people often presenting this sort of unintentionally ironic argument don't seem to recognize the idiocy or exclusivity of the thing they're suggesting. Lacking understanding of the absurdity of the situation is the definition of their ignorance, because the burden of understanding and proof are on the person presenting the argument, not the audience. (Everyone is ignorant in some way, and nobody is even close to knowing everything. You're being dramatic if you really think that way, even for a second.)
I currently have a full time job in government as a computer scientist. I'm also taking an online master's at georgia tech and it's fairly good so far - no other way I could study supercomputing. Why would I leave an AI job where I'm learning practical AI skills to study CS? Async with evening exams was my only option.
If you don't have a broad perspective on all life circumstances and types of education, don't just dismiss what you don't know.
I had to go to community college while having a job and paying for everything and doing it around my schedule. This was before most places had online options and those that did were like, university of phoenix where it seemed like it would limit you because it wasn't considered the same as a non-profit university. I don't really buy this argument that people need some kind of online experience or otherwise they would be cut out (excluding people with some kind of disability that prevents them from going places). Plenty of people were able to complete college educations by showing up to night classes prior to online classes being a thing.
After that, I worked at GaTech where one of my responsibilities was helping to build the physics portion of the masters program that you are currently in (i don't think the physics portion ever turned into a master program like OSMCS, i left around the time OSMCS started offering degrees). When building these courses we tried to implement the best information from cognitive science and education, we tried to build the best exercises, we had super active involvement in course forums, etc. We did everything right, and we still felt that something was missing from the experience from the teaching side and we did not find that students in the online side participated in the same ways, or learned the same information, as those on-campus. I still believe that most people would benefit more from in person educational experiences. I think your experience in the gatech program is a valuable one and I have heard many positive things about this program since I left to go and do other stuff. However, I still believe that there is something valuable from most educational programs being offered in person only.
However I believe they do require you to show up for _exams_. Online proctoring is a miserable disaster, especially in the AI era, so I think for credentials it's unfortunately necessary to have in-person exams. (edit: checked and they switched to online during COVID, unsuprisingly, but are considering switching back)
The ease of financial fraud is a separate issue. In the US I suspect that's linked to widespread identity fraud.
When I went to university, the first week we received the syllabus, and date for final examination. Lectures were some old professors pretty much just doing book recitals in a large auditorium - little to no interaction with the students. If you had questions, that's what the TAs were for.
Any actual learning, you had to do in the library or study halls - and hopefully join a reading/study group. But the vast majority of students just showed up to lectures (if that even), and studied the course material on their own.
Pretty much what every large college / university looks like. And to be completely honest, I don't see why that can't be done online. Some of the core classes today have thousands of students at the largest schools.
When I took my MBA at a much smaller (in terms of student mass) school, it was completely different. But that was due to the much smaller number of students, and more professors, who had a much closer connection to the students. For that type of education - and with that type of infrastructure, I do agree that getting people physically to the school can help. But that's more by design.
Very few students watch lectures online. There is massive amounts of cheating in online courses. Almost no online course requires proctored exams. Online education is overall worse, in terms of actual learning, than face-to-face courses.
* entirely self driven, which is hard for a lot of necessary but often dry courses
* taught mostly via online videos; impossible to ask questions on the spot or explore concepts
* interaction with peers and professors is almost entirely forced or inorganic and often terrible
* limited networking options; no real community; hard to build bridges and get references when your professor is an automated test system (i.e. Canvas, et al)
* often limited screening; U Phoenix or WGU takes anyone, and now I have 100+ semi-literate applicants who somehow pulled a 3.3 via online schools blowing up my applications
* difficult to assess value proposition; you generally need to register to take part, while I can just drive to VA Tech or Dartmouth or even the Naval Academy and walk around and see (mostly) what it's like
Like anything it depends on the situation. It works well for some people and subjects but not for others.
Last semester I had a student in my online class that was every tech illiterate. There was an assignment where they were supposed to download a file, fill in the blanks and submit it. This is something that should take no more than 5 minutes. The student couldn't figure out how. I told the student, "you can just print it out then take a picture." Come to find out the student doesn't have a laptop or desktop computer and was trying to do it on a phone. I look at their schedule and they are taking all online courses. That person should not be taking online classes.
This kind of fraud existed even before online college became so popular.
Around 2014-2015 we had to start reporting the “last day of attendance” or participation for any student who failed a course. Kind of a pain when you prefer to treat your university students as adults and not take attendance.
Remote and correspondence (the same thing really) have existed forever. There is zero basis for your statement it’s worse, and there is zero basis for your statement that there is compromise. Remote schooling allows people who wouldn’t have the means to educate themselves formally such as working people, parents, adult learners, etc to do so in a manner practical to them.
I have a degree I got in person and now one I am working on remote. Do you know what the difference is? NOTHING! When I went in person I was making up for the shortcomings of professors too. I was still having to teach myself a lot. The only true difference was I wasn’t able to do more than terrible part time work and I drove 45 minutes one way.
Malware vendors like honorlock have made remote schooling much more difficult. Not in terms of learning but in terms of overall stress level. Remote schooling itself is an incredible way to break from the aristocratic ideal still pedaled by universities today.
I’m envious of students whose parents prepared appropriately for their kids to go to school and focus full time. I was not one of them. My situation made worse by my parents making just enough to disqualify me from any aid despite their contribution of 0. The existence of remote schooling has allowed me to pursue my educational dreams.
Yeah, they once told my wife this "expect students to show up in person", when she was pregnant and not all the time well. The result? Thrown out of the self paid language course at university with no refund.
When I read that title, I was expecting the following story: "Academic ghostwriters", thanks to AI, are now completing online degrees by the hundreds per actual human headcount, selling the opportunity to put one's name on the "work" to fraudulently obtain a degree.
If you get a Pell grant or other “non-traditional” financial aid packages, there’s a bit for associated costs. It’s not huge money, but if you do this scheme across many schools…
Financial aid is sent directly to the college. However, if you have a positive balance in your account (financial aid, grants, scholarships, or loans more than tuition and fees) you can request the bursar deposit that balance into your bank account. This is how I paid for living expenses in the years I lived off campus.
It does afaik so I'm confused what the monetary scam is. Community College in California is cheap or free for most students so I feel like something is being left out of the explanation.
How do you handle students that are not capable of showing up on the first day in-person?
- Live far away
- Have a job they can't just not show up for
- Having children to take care of
- Health issues
There's tons of reasons for people not to be able to attend in person, and not all of them are "because I didn't want to". And, for a _lot_ of those people, improving their education can have a huge impact on their quality of life.
Can’t show up for one day? That is such an incredibly low bar to also ask them to sit through a long series of courses and test. These college colleges are state funded, so if the person is overseas or on the opposite side of the US… then what are we really funding? That’s not the intent of a “community college”.
I would say, not have to show up for Day 1 but how about have to show up at the collage with a state issued ID in order to have funds released to their account?
It looks like the main issue is that the people committing the fraud are able to create student profiles and request student aid with these profiles. I am unsure of California's requirements but this generally requires a SSN. California is issuing Real ID so verification should be relatively easy.
Presumably we would handle that in the same way we did up until ~5 years ago or so.
Right now people can't enrol in "full" classes either, except the classes are "full" of bots.
And a single day of attendance is really not a very high bar to meet. For special cases where it's really a problem accommodations can be made on request.
This only adds a small amount of friction. Some more effective options off the top of my head:
1. free classes but no aid
2. pay covered costs directly
3. tie aid to participation (not performance)
You could argue someone could still scam the system by attending the class and submiting AI-generated content or just copying others, but this is much more involved. Some of the blame has to land on the distance programs of the institutions. They've become overly relient on charging full tuition for much cheaper online delivery, and don't care too much about the "community" part of college anymore.
That might not always work. There is a huge issue of Lyft and Uber drivers showing up the first day, passing all the background checks, etc. then selling their account to someone else to take their place. Maybe better is to show up first day, and to do random ID checks throughout the semester. It feels.. unfriendly and accusatory to do that but I'm not sure of the alternative...
.. but if we wanted to be a little Orwellian.. put cameras and facial recognition in the classrooms to take automatic attendance and to identify students who should not be there, or who may be missing for prolonged absences. That'll go over really well....
I'm surprised to see ID verification isn't required apparently (or that's being faked as well), that's usually required for any kind of program that involves financial aid.
At my community college we are increasingly teaching high school kids. I have taught students who were not of voting age and didn't have a drivers license.
That being said, we have contracted with an id verification service to randomly ask some students to verify especially if we think they are "fake" students in online classes.
Readit News
Students had to do discussion board posts and these students responses all had html formatting as if they were indented replies from an email chain. The clincher was one of them posted in the introduction message board, "Hello, I am a student in [insert city] and I'm studying..."
We had been warned that these "students" were coming because we are part of a system of schools and the schools earlier in the alphabet had encountered it in the semesters before us. So the school had contracted with some id verification system and those students got kicked out pretty quickly.
If attending these classes was even just free, this wouldn't be a problem. Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous.
Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to avoid the scammers if they limited first time students to in-person classes.
> Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.
I think the idea would be if someone's getting paid to go to school so they don't have to work, then they should go to in-person classes. Online classes probably shouldn't be an option.
If there's profit available and no personal cost (in either time or money), scammers will exploit the program as described ("fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds").
Working while going to school is not uncommon or isolated to California. Full time work while going to school is excessive - but that is also a California COL issue that the state needs to actually tackle. But it gets worse the more they don't address their deficits. Debt begets debt and it always drives up COL.
Until you solve the primitive animalistic problems of selfishness, greed, and energy conserving laziness, were not going to have nice things. Someone asshole is going to be mad they have to share. Some asshole is going to lie and scam to get as much free shit as they can.
Solving this is a very hard problem.
But the numbers mentioned there seem tiny for a federal programme like the Pell Grant. A lot of times it's a matter of scale: a bit of fraud isn't ideal, but entirely manageable, so whatever.
Since then the scale expanded greatly. This is often a problem when you move things online: you're instantly connected with everyone on the world, which also means you're instantly connected with every asshole in the world. And with AI a single asshole can now pretend to be 200 assholes.
The solution is to do less things online and more in person. There are some advantages for some people in doing things online, but it also negatively affects everyone, and in general it just doesn't seem worth it to do everything online. It's not binary: you can do many things online while still requiring some bits in-person (e.g. registration, exams, occasional events).
On the other hand, maybe the barrier to entry is just waaayyy too low for online community college classes for this to make any sense. Students should have some skin in the game. Maybe students should be required to take a couple in person classes before financial aid can be used for online classes?
I don't think the article was dancing around it though.
No, they provide student aid that covers some (it's not much) of low income students' living expenses so that they can actually study and get through college, instead of working fulltime and it taking 2-3 times as long.
It's the same type of financial aid scholarships 4-year universities give out too, and in most/all States.
It's just not reasonable when they're not even traveling to the office.
We all understand the context of words here. Believe it or not, many people think that the government providing things for its citizens via taxation is a good thing.
When I've thought about it, this scenario never occurred to me, but it's a perfect example: we're going to be increasingly unable to know what is "true" in a million different ways, and people are going to exploit that in every way possible.
We're headed for bad times, and I don't know what the answer is, if there is one.
Wouldn't having class in person be a sure way to know?
That said, there are tremendous advantages to supporting remote learning. Simply requiring in person has far greater costs than are being described in the source article.
Deleted Comment
Which is why we evolved to have exquisite bullshit detectors. They're not perfect, but they're pretty decent.
The answer around what is real and not is the same as it ever was -- does information come from a respected, generally trustworthy source or not? Does it come from a source that might have an agenda, or not? Is it written in a way that seems to gather a lot of evidence in all directions and then explain its conclusion in a plausible way, or is it clearly one-sided?
Bullshit detection, fraud detection, scam detection -- these have always been necessary skills in the world. Sure the scale of misinformation grows, but so do the tools we have to combat it. Email spam was a huge problem, then Gmail filtered it out.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
(not a joke)
The number of MAGA voters really strains the credibility of this one.
I’d have much preferred an in-person education. But I don’t think we should look at the situation as “A is better than B so let’s get rid of B”. B still serves an important purpose and eliminating it will leave people behind.
I get what you mean, but saying that something _should_ be the case in response to not liking it doesn’t really make sense since that’s the reason it’s popular in the first place. States don’t do this, so that’s part of why online schooling is valuable.
I agree that online school isn’t as quality as in person (in my experience), but it gives a ton of flexibility to those who can’t commute (due to time or cost) and allows those people to possibly get an education when they otherwise couldn’t.
I wonder if there’s a formal term for this kind of argument (would love to know because I see it a lot).
If you want a case and point of this, imagine a comedian proposing this idea dripping with sarcasm and clever little jokes, sort of what John Oliver does. The overall absurdity would be obvious, and everyone would understand the suggestion is a bad idea, with a little bit of honey to go with the vinegar.
The people often presenting this sort of unintentionally ironic argument don't seem to recognize the idiocy or exclusivity of the thing they're suggesting. Lacking understanding of the absurdity of the situation is the definition of their ignorance, because the burden of understanding and proof are on the person presenting the argument, not the audience. (Everyone is ignorant in some way, and nobody is even close to knowing everything. You're being dramatic if you really think that way, even for a second.)
If you don't have a broad perspective on all life circumstances and types of education, don't just dismiss what you don't know.
After that, I worked at GaTech where one of my responsibilities was helping to build the physics portion of the masters program that you are currently in (i don't think the physics portion ever turned into a master program like OSMCS, i left around the time OSMCS started offering degrees). When building these courses we tried to implement the best information from cognitive science and education, we tried to build the best exercises, we had super active involvement in course forums, etc. We did everything right, and we still felt that something was missing from the experience from the teaching side and we did not find that students in the online side participated in the same ways, or learned the same information, as those on-campus. I still believe that most people would benefit more from in person educational experiences. I think your experience in the gatech program is a valuable one and I have heard many positive things about this program since I left to go and do other stuff. However, I still believe that there is something valuable from most educational programs being offered in person only.
However I believe they do require you to show up for _exams_. Online proctoring is a miserable disaster, especially in the AI era, so I think for credentials it's unfortunately necessary to have in-person exams. (edit: checked and they switched to online during COVID, unsuprisingly, but are considering switching back)
The ease of financial fraud is a separate issue. In the US I suspect that's linked to widespread identity fraud.
When I went to university, the first week we received the syllabus, and date for final examination. Lectures were some old professors pretty much just doing book recitals in a large auditorium - little to no interaction with the students. If you had questions, that's what the TAs were for.
Any actual learning, you had to do in the library or study halls - and hopefully join a reading/study group. But the vast majority of students just showed up to lectures (if that even), and studied the course material on their own.
Pretty much what every large college / university looks like. And to be completely honest, I don't see why that can't be done online. Some of the core classes today have thousands of students at the largest schools.
When I took my MBA at a much smaller (in terms of student mass) school, it was completely different. But that was due to the much smaller number of students, and more professors, who had a much closer connection to the students. For that type of education - and with that type of infrastructure, I do agree that getting people physically to the school can help. But that's more by design.
* taught mostly via online videos; impossible to ask questions on the spot or explore concepts
* interaction with peers and professors is almost entirely forced or inorganic and often terrible
* limited networking options; no real community; hard to build bridges and get references when your professor is an automated test system (i.e. Canvas, et al)
* often limited screening; U Phoenix or WGU takes anyone, and now I have 100+ semi-literate applicants who somehow pulled a 3.3 via online schools blowing up my applications
* difficult to assess value proposition; you generally need to register to take part, while I can just drive to VA Tech or Dartmouth or even the Naval Academy and walk around and see (mostly) what it's like
Last semester I had a student in my online class that was every tech illiterate. There was an assignment where they were supposed to download a file, fill in the blanks and submit it. This is something that should take no more than 5 minutes. The student couldn't figure out how. I told the student, "you can just print it out then take a picture." Come to find out the student doesn't have a laptop or desktop computer and was trying to do it on a phone. I look at their schedule and they are taking all online courses. That person should not be taking online classes.
Around 2014-2015 we had to start reporting the “last day of attendance” or participation for any student who failed a course. Kind of a pain when you prefer to treat your university students as adults and not take attendance.
I have a degree I got in person and now one I am working on remote. Do you know what the difference is? NOTHING! When I went in person I was making up for the shortcomings of professors too. I was still having to teach myself a lot. The only true difference was I wasn’t able to do more than terrible part time work and I drove 45 minutes one way.
Malware vendors like honorlock have made remote schooling much more difficult. Not in terms of learning but in terms of overall stress level. Remote schooling itself is an incredible way to break from the aristocratic ideal still pedaled by universities today.
I’m envious of students whose parents prepared appropriately for their kids to go to school and focus full time. I was not one of them. My situation made worse by my parents making just enough to disqualify me from any aid despite their contribution of 0. The existence of remote schooling has allowed me to pursue my educational dreams.
The school should have had information about that in the syllabus.
Either way, with appropriate accommodations, in person classes can be flexible as well.
I'm sure they apply for the maximum amount which are supposed to be used on school related expenses, etc.
It should be easy to follow the money.
- Live far away
- Have a job they can't just not show up for
- Having children to take care of
- Health issues
There's tons of reasons for people not to be able to attend in person, and not all of them are "because I didn't want to". And, for a _lot_ of those people, improving their education can have a huge impact on their quality of life.
It looks like the main issue is that the people committing the fraud are able to create student profiles and request student aid with these profiles. I am unsure of California's requirements but this generally requires a SSN. California is issuing Real ID so verification should be relatively easy.
Right now people can't enrol in "full" classes either, except the classes are "full" of bots.
And a single day of attendance is really not a very high bar to meet. For special cases where it's really a problem accommodations can be made on request.
1. free classes but no aid 2. pay covered costs directly 3. tie aid to participation (not performance)
You could argue someone could still scam the system by attending the class and submiting AI-generated content or just copying others, but this is much more involved. Some of the blame has to land on the distance programs of the institutions. They've become overly relient on charging full tuition for much cheaper online delivery, and don't care too much about the "community" part of college anymore.
When really the discussion should be around how bots have become good enough to pass as students. And what can we do about verification.
.. but if we wanted to be a little Orwellian.. put cameras and facial recognition in the classrooms to take automatic attendance and to identify students who should not be there, or who may be missing for prolonged absences. That'll go over really well....
That being said, we have contracted with an id verification service to randomly ask some students to verify especially if we think they are "fake" students in online classes.
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