You are the president of a small community college. Your school faces declining enrollment, and you feel threatened. You would like to keep your nice job, so you decide to “boost” the enrollment-you make up “phantom” students (with stolen SS numbers…since your support (from the city/state/Federal Government) comes from enrollment numbers, you get more grant money the higher your enrollment becomes. You merely submit false numbers-nobody notices that the parking lot is mostly empty. Since the dropout rate is high (over 60%), you just keep manufacturing new “students”, and collect the grants moneys…and your faculty likes this, because the enjoy salaries without having to teach many students.
Could such a scam be carried out? How long could it last?
I’m sure someone could try a scam like that, but the first thing that jumps out at me is that it isn’t even necessary. A college administration who wanted to their their hands clean while boosting “enrollment” would just need to create a bunch of online sections, advertise them widely to an audience who would be interested in grant money but not necessarily able or willing to complete classes, and watch the “students” roll in. There have been cases of students enrolling in multiple online colleges as a way of scamming financial aid money, so the administrator in question would just have to not look very hard at who was enrolling.
I taught a course at a local community college years ago. When I quit it was partially due to administrators pressuring me to give passing grades to everyone.
I don’t know how online enrollment works, but for traditional programs in most community colleges the instructor has to sign (under penalty of perjury) and submit a roster which shows who attended each session and the number of hours each person attended. Attendance verification for public schools consists of huge amounts of paperwork and documentation, that must be attested to by numerous people in administrative roles, as well. All of this gets audited every two or three years, I believe.
So either the scam would have to involve great numbers of other employees (which would make exposure very likely) or your hypothetical president would have to falsify all the documentation him or herself.
Do you realize how much work that would be? The “nice” job which the president is trying to keep would become such a nightmare that it would never be worth the salary.
A scam like that certainly did occur at a community college in East St. Louis for a few years. It was so bad that the Dean of the college lived 400 miles away and only came to work about 2 days a week. People were getting degrees who didn’t even know that they going to college!
I had a transfer student at the CC where I taught who would go to class at the ESL CC and no one, even the instructor, would be there. The hallways would be empty. He stopped going and received an A for the course.
Finally after much prodding, the State of Illinois did an investigation and shut the school done immediately. A few people got slaps on the wrist but no real jail time. The college reopened a few years later with a new staff. I haven’t heard anything about its quality.
Here’s an article that briefly discussed the fraud.
I witnessed a college near the one I was teaching fail. Part of the problem was they were filling out student aid forms on behalf of students, cashing the checks, etc. All without the students knowing about it. But there was more going on.
The Feds caught on. They withdrew all their financial programs (including student loan approval). The regional accreditation group pulled their accreditation. Two admins were found guilty and fined.
But note that these were real students.
So, yeah, people have done things like this. And they seem to eventually be caught. Fake students would be even easier to spot.
The way you run the scam and get away with it is draw in a bunch of clueless folks with big promises of all the wonderful jobs waiting for them once they get their “degree”. The students rack up student loans, pay the school, then drop out. Lather, rinse, repeat. No need to run a chancier scam.
guizot: I don’t know where you were or anything, but in teaching and being a student in colleges for 30 years, no one took attendance. The most I ever did was check IDs during final exams for really large sections.
College isn’t grade school. The students are adults. If they do or do not want to attend class that’s their business.
Los Angeles City College. It’s not about student responsibility–it’s about ADA ($$$).
Wow, our school would be shut down immediately if we tried that!
Federal loans are VERY picky about attendance, and some loan programs (GI Bill, VA) won’t even allow some online classes to be included. But lack of attendance pretty much means mandatory dropping of that student from the rosters. Federal loan agencies frown on paying for classes that are not being attended, and the lawsuits that students could file would not be worth this nonsense.
Our school also gets “surprise” visits from accreditation groups who pour through our files with a fine tooth comb. We get a list of problems/dings at the end of their visit and have a very short window to ensure whatever happened doesn’t happen again.
BTW, we have also been warned that they are now looking into programs and classes that give out “A’s” like candy…a big red flag that will be yet another “ding” on our list of things to fix. Your grades don’t have to match the Bell Curve exactly, but you better not have 95% of your class getting “A’s” every term, year after year…
ADA? American Dental Association? The only thing on Wikipedia’s list that comes anywhere close seems to be the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. And that would have nothing to do with requiring the taking of school attendance.
I taught at public and private schools. All fully accredited by their respective regional group. All with students with federally approved loans. None of them cared a bit about attendance.
The accrediting folks are quite picky. We had to keep old assignments and tests, sample works, etc. A real pain the neck. (One place took their renewal lightly and they got slammed with even tighter audits. People were not happy about that.) No one ever said a peep about attendance.
If some school is enforcing profs to take attendance, it has nothing to do with Federal laws or anything remotely like that. (Unless the Feds suspected something like the OP’s scam and were monitoring things closely.)
Colleges are a prime breeding ground for a lot urban legend-ish type stuff. People tell each other “We have to do X because of Y.” all the time when it’s not remotely true. E.g., at one place the students were positive that profs had to give the midterm before the withdrawal date. Nope. Weren’t even required to give a midterm at all. Any number of tests at any time.
Right. This way you get actual people to voluntarily pay you or sign off on financial aid in their name being deposited at your bursar’s. And then it’s no fault but their own if they drop out or fail out.
You’re right–I was confusing the credit program with the non-credit, where ADA (average daily attendance) determines certain types of funding. For credit courses (where funding is based on FTES, or enrollment) we were to report overall numbers for other (departmental) reasons, not individual attendance, as I stated above.
And what you say about the urban legends type stuff is true, in my experience. Or at least, misconceptions, about things like “prerequisites,” requirements for admission, etc.