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Also, I'm wondering what happened in the previous years? I wouldn't be surprised if a scam was ongoing for a while, but 64K applications ended up being a little

• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related, that is, being able to go to school from home enabled this scale of fraud. It probably existed before that but wasn't too widespread. I'd also be willing to bet that other state systems would find similar situations if they checked their rolls, like you said.
  • busyant 5y ago
    > I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related You might be correct. The obvious idea is that it's more difficult to identify the phantom students if everything is virtual. That being said, where I teach, we have a system (both for on-ground and on-line) where you have to complete at least one non-trivial assignment (usually a quiz) within the first 2 weeks of the semester. If you don't complete the quiz (or whatever), you are dropped from the course and the loans are not fully released. I imagine our policy was in response to "phantom" students abusing the loan system. But our policy has been in place for at least 10 years so the scam has been afoot for a while.