9 ms·

It seems like they're attacking the wrong end of the problem by trying to detect fake students in the classrooms. If the issue is that people are signing up for

It seems like they're attacking the wrong end of the problem by trying to detect fake students in the classrooms. If the issue is that people are signing up for financial aid and then disappearing with the cash they'd be better off making sure that the people who get financial aid actually are who they say they are before sending them money, or better yet stop giving cash as financial aid and instead give some type of credit that can only be spent on/at the school. Once scammers can't get access to the money the problem of bots in the classroom will mostly go away.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
leereeves 1y ago
I agree, it sounds like the problem is in the way financial aid is granted. Is this (as the headline suggests) more of a problem in California? Does California have particularly generous and vulnerable financial aid?
- gedy 1y ago
  California does give financial aid to undocumented/illegal immigrants, so verification can be difficult and touchy subject: https://www.csac.ca.gov/college-financial-aid-and-safety-for-undocumented-students https://www.csac.ca.gov/college-financial-aid-and-safety-for...
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    Shouldn't the process of getting that financial aid make them registered?
  - int_19h 1y ago
    If they truly don't have any means to verify that the person receiving the grant is who they think it is, this sounds broken by design.
    - ac29 1y ago
      I only clicked through the first few steps of the process but it appears to require government issued ID.
      - hedora 1y ago
        You don't need to be in the country legally to get a California driver's license. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification... Similarly, there are mechanisms that allow victims of crimes to seek help from the police without fear of deportation. Makes sense to me. I'm much more worried about road safety and crime than people coming to the US then paying payroll and sales taxes, but not being able to claim federal benefits.
        int_19h 1y ago
        Which is to say, they are "undocumented" on federal level but not on state level. Which is well and good, but then the original question still applies: how do the bots manage to get past all these requirements?
    - theoreticalmal 1y ago
      Say that in certain political circles and you’re liable to get berated
      - int_19h 1y ago
        People in those circles generally believe that college education should just be free for all residents. Which is an internally consistent position, since if everyone is eligible, there's no need for verification. It's specifically the programs that restrict eligibility that don't make sense if you can't verify said eligibility (which starts with verifying identity).
        janalsncm 1y ago
alistairSH 1y ago
Yeah, this confused me as well... Are these bots successfully completing FAFSA forms to the government? And the government is successfully generating ISIRs to send to the schools? If yes, then this is a federal ID verification issue. If not, why are the schools sending aid payments sand ISIR? Or does CA run its own state-level aid programs that skip the federal forms completely (and botching the ID verification on their own)? Or are all of these effectively stolen IDs? Where the FAFSA and ISIR are for real people (but people who aren't actually students)? The article is missing a LOT of details, what a waste of time.
- shusaku 1y ago
  Identity theft is relatively common, so I’m not sure if their aid system should be considerable especially vulnerable or not.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    We need a better phrase, like “impersonation fraud” or something, which focuses on the two parties actually involved. You can’t actually steal somebody’s identity of course, they are just an uninvolved third party.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      Eh, I'd say it's a bit more complicated than that. Quite often the impersonator had nothing to do with the collection of the identity itself. There are people that 'copy' things like insecure online information around identity, but there are also people that physically steal things like drivers licenses and birth certificates. This is the stage of a crime that I'd consider actual identity theft. After that you have black market information brokers. They didn't capture the identities in the first place. They don't directly use the information to impersonate others and yet they are still complicit in a crime. Then you have the final stage of impersonation fraud as you state.
      - bee_rider 1y ago
carlosjobim 1y ago
Why would any of the involved parties care at all? It's not their money being sent to scammers, so it's not a problem for them.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  Uh, federal financial aid is absolutely all of our money (acquired from taxes). And loan fraud just drives up the cost of loans for everybody else. And the overhead of fighting this eats into school resources, driving up the tuition that's forcing the loan in the first place. And as a professor/instructor, that's money that could go to funding more tenured positions (vs adjunct spots or other "non-permanent" teachers). So, sure, without putting much thought into it, an individual might not care. But after any thought at all, one should see that fraud drives up the cost for all of us.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    > And the overhead of fighting this eats into school resources Not if they continue to ignore it, because once again, it's not their money being sent to scammers. > And loan fraud just drives up the cost of loans for everybody else. Doesn't sound like a problem for the involved parties. > So, sure, without putting much thought into it, an individual might not care. But after any thought at all, one should see that fraud drives up the cost for all of us. You might care. I might care. But I guarantee that the involved parties do not care for even three seconds of their day about it. They have much more important things to think about, such as what color of the ballons for their kids next birthday party.
    - mistrial9 1y ago
      > But I guarantee that the involved parties do not care for even three seconds of their day about it. yes -- based on real life interaction with real low-level accounting middle class bureaucrats in California, I agree that most of the people who are professionals in Federal student aid do not personally care about this bigger system. More importantly they care about their own paychecks, which most of them use to buy things for their own family events.
Loughla 1y ago
>stop giving cash as financial aid and instead give some type of credit that can only be spent on/at the school. Many students use their F.A. to pay for groceries or rent. Turning it into company store credit is a really bad idea.
rwky 1y ago
When I did my degree many moons ago in three UK I got a student loan like many people. The loan company sends the money directly to the university not the student. Weirdly though when I did my masters they sent the money to me.
EGreg 1y ago
But why can't the scammers simply use AI to pass as actual people at scale? Let's say in 10-15 years they'll have robots that can pass for humans as well. Then what? How are you going to tell who's a real human?
- D-Coder 1y ago
  By the legally-mandated "R." in front of their name. (Isaac Asimov, _The Caves of Steel_.)
pc86 1y ago
It's been a few years since I was in college, but back in the '00s when it was relevant to me, there was nothing I could do to get cash. I submitted financial aid documents (to include federally-subsidized loans), and money went from the lender to the school. If there was an underpayment, I had to submit more docs and the lender sent more money. If there was an overpayment, the school refunded the lender and my statement was updated. Other than completely unsecured private loans how the hell are 18 year olds getting cash for their student loans?
- mock-possum 1y ago
  Yeah I’m puzzled by this too - I suppose it helped that I wasn’t living in school housing, I was living at home for most of college, so my only college expenses were tuition, transportation, and supplies, all of which could be paid directly by my loan issuers but - yeah, I never saw a cent of cash, either through student loans or financial aid, it all just went directly to my school.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  I got a cash deposit for living expenses. I had to pay rent, after all, while out of town at school. Hell, I needed food too. The payment to the school was handled exactly as you say.
tuxpenguine 1y ago
This is exactly the issue that Johnny Harris talked about in his video about the poverty industrial complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nwdRIXGjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nwdRIXGjc
Khelavaster 1y ago
[dead]
Suppafly 1y ago
> If the issue is that people are signing up for financial aid and then disappearing with the cash I'm curious how that even happens, it's pretty hard to get actual cash back after the banks send the money to the school on your behalf.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

leereeves 1y ago

I agree, it sounds like the problem is in the way financial aid is granted. Is this (as the headline suggests) more of a problem in California? Does California have particularly generous and vulnerable financial aid?

gedy 1y ago
California does give financial aid to undocumented/illegal immigrants, so verification can be difficult and touchy subject: https://www.csac.ca.gov/college-financial-aid-and-safety-for-undocumented-students https://www.csac.ca.gov/college-financial-aid-and-safety-for...
- Aeolun 1y ago
  Shouldn't the process of getting that financial aid make them registered?
- int_19h 1y ago
  If they truly don't have any means to verify that the person receiving the grant is who they think it is, this sounds broken by design.
  - ac29 1y ago
    I only clicked through the first few steps of the process but it appears to require government issued ID.
    - hedora 1y ago
      You don't need to be in the country legally to get a California driver's license. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/ https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification... Similarly, there are mechanisms that allow victims of crimes to seek help from the police without fear of deportation. Makes sense to me. I'm much more worried about road safety and crime than people coming to the US then paying payroll and sales taxes, but not being able to claim federal benefits.
      - int_19h 1y ago
        Which is to say, they are "undocumented" on federal level but not on state level. Which is well and good, but then the original question still applies: how do the bots manage to get past all these requirements?
  - theoreticalmal 1y ago
    Say that in certain political circles and you’re liable to get berated
    - int_19h 1y ago
      People in those circles generally believe that college education should just be free for all residents. Which is an internally consistent position, since if everyone is eligible, there's no need for verification. It's specifically the programs that restrict eligibility that don't make sense if you can't verify said eligibility (which starts with verifying identity).
      - janalsncm 1y ago

alistairSH 1y ago

Yeah, this confused me as well... Are these bots successfully completing FAFSA forms to the government? And the government is successfully generating ISIRs to send to the schools? If yes, then this is a federal ID verification issue. If not, why are the schools sending aid payments sand ISIR? Or does CA run its own state-level aid programs that skip the federal forms completely (and botching the ID verification on their own)? Or are all of these effectively stolen IDs? Where the FAFSA and ISIR are for real people (but people who aren't actually students)? The article is missing a LOT of details, what a waste of time.

shusaku 1y ago
Identity theft is relatively common, so I’m not sure if their aid system should be considerable especially vulnerable or not.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  We need a better phrase, like “impersonation fraud” or something, which focuses on the two parties actually involved. You can’t actually steal somebody’s identity of course, they are just an uninvolved third party.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    Eh, I'd say it's a bit more complicated than that. Quite often the impersonator had nothing to do with the collection of the identity itself. There are people that 'copy' things like insecure online information around identity, but there are also people that physically steal things like drivers licenses and birth certificates. This is the stage of a crime that I'd consider actual identity theft. After that you have black market information brokers. They didn't capture the identities in the first place. They don't directly use the information to impersonate others and yet they are still complicit in a crime. Then you have the final stage of impersonation fraud as you state.
    - bee_rider 1y ago

carlosjobim 1y ago

Why would any of the involved parties care at all? It's not their money being sent to scammers, so it's not a problem for them.

alistairSH 1y ago
Uh, federal financial aid is absolutely all of our money (acquired from taxes). And loan fraud just drives up the cost of loans for everybody else. And the overhead of fighting this eats into school resources, driving up the tuition that's forcing the loan in the first place. And as a professor/instructor, that's money that could go to funding more tenured positions (vs adjunct spots or other "non-permanent" teachers). So, sure, without putting much thought into it, an individual might not care. But after any thought at all, one should see that fraud drives up the cost for all of us.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  > And the overhead of fighting this eats into school resources Not if they continue to ignore it, because once again, it's not their money being sent to scammers. > And loan fraud just drives up the cost of loans for everybody else. Doesn't sound like a problem for the involved parties. > So, sure, without putting much thought into it, an individual might not care. But after any thought at all, one should see that fraud drives up the cost for all of us. You might care. I might care. But I guarantee that the involved parties do not care for even three seconds of their day about it. They have much more important things to think about, such as what color of the ballons for their kids next birthday party.
  - mistrial9 1y ago
    > But I guarantee that the involved parties do not care for even three seconds of their day about it. yes -- based on real life interaction with real low-level accounting middle class bureaucrats in California, I agree that most of the people who are professionals in Federal student aid do not personally care about this bigger system. More importantly they care about their own paychecks, which most of them use to buy things for their own family events.

Loughla 1y ago

>stop giving cash as financial aid and instead give some type of credit that can only be spent on/at the school. Many students use their F.A. to pay for groceries or rent. Turning it into company store credit is a really bad idea.

rwky 1y ago

When I did my degree many moons ago in three UK I got a student loan like many people. The loan company sends the money directly to the university not the student. Weirdly though when I did my masters they sent the money to me.

EGreg 1y ago

But why can't the scammers simply use AI to pass as actual people at scale? Let's say in 10-15 years they'll have robots that can pass for humans as well. Then what? How are you going to tell who's a real human?

D-Coder 1y ago
By the legally-mandated "R." in front of their name. (Isaac Asimov, _The Caves of Steel_.)

pc86 1y ago

It's been a few years since I was in college, but back in the '00s when it was relevant to me, there was nothing I could do to get cash. I submitted financial aid documents (to include federally-subsidized loans), and money went from the lender to the school. If there was an underpayment, I had to submit more docs and the lender sent more money. If there was an overpayment, the school refunded the lender and my statement was updated. Other than completely unsecured private loans how the hell are 18 year olds getting cash for their student loans?

mock-possum 1y ago
Yeah I’m puzzled by this too - I suppose it helped that I wasn’t living in school housing, I was living at home for most of college, so my only college expenses were tuition, transportation, and supplies, all of which could be paid directly by my loan issuers but - yeah, I never saw a cent of cash, either through student loans or financial aid, it all just went directly to my school.
jvanderbot 1y ago
I got a cash deposit for living expenses. I had to pay rent, after all, while out of town at school. Hell, I needed food too. The payment to the school was handled exactly as you say.

tuxpenguine 1y ago

This is exactly the issue that Johnny Harris talked about in his video about the poverty industrial complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nwdRIXGjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nwdRIXGjc

Khelavaster 1y ago

[dead]

Suppafly 1y ago

> If the issue is that people are signing up for financial aid and then disappearing with the cash I'm curious how that even happens, it's pretty hard to get actual cash back after the banks send the money to the school on your behalf.