5 ms·

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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
harvey9 2y ago
Probably course completion rates and other metrics that make your service eligible for loans in the first place.
- nine_k 2y ago
  If course completion rate becomes the metric that brings in money, it will quickly soar to 100% or maybe above. See: Goodhart's Law.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Well, that's kind of the whole idea behind college, isn't it...
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      It becomes meaningless when the professors are pressured to pass failing students to make the numbers look good.
      - Akronymus 2y ago
        Like what happens with lower schools under the "no child left behind" doctrine?
  - harvey9 2y ago
    I was thinking of students who dropped out. It's a different fraud if the institution is claiming re-enrollments that never happened.
autoexec 2y ago
Students aren't able to get into classes when bots are taking all the spots. Teachers actually care about educating students so they don't want to have their time wasted by bots. There's only so much loan money to go around and the schools want to get that cash into their own pockets, but the schools don't get any when scammers are running off with it to funnel money to other countries or whatever else they're doing. Similarly, students who really need the help can't get it when it all goes to someone who isn't interested in paying for education. Schools have another problem with "ghost students" in general which is that there's a lot of other stuff going on at schools that depend on real students being there. Vendors, club activities, sporting/social events, nearby bars and restaurants etc. There's an entire ecosystem on and around campus which is created or supported by real students. All that non-classroom stuff helps make the school more attractive to students and often directly generates income for the school as well, but little of it would exist or be worthwhile if the campus is a ghost town.
- toast0 2y ago
  When I was at community college (~ 2000), if the section you wanted was full at registration, you'd register in another section (in case), but show up at the section you wanted and talk with the instructor. Depending on the course/instructor, you'd might need to show up for the first week and anybody who hadn't attended in the first week would be dropped and those who had attended but weren't registered could take those spaces. Sometimes the instructor would do that at the first meeting. You'd go to the section you were registered in as well, and let the instructor know there (sometimes it'd be the same instructor and then maybe you wouldn't need to attend both sections). Not ideal, but registration order was based on completed credits, and after one semester it got a lot easier to get into the sections you wanted; students (real or not) that haven't completed any classes get to pick sections last, so once you've shown you're willing and able to complete classes, you're good. (Protip: check if taking any class in the summer will help you get into the sections you want in the fall) At that time, you could drop classes in the first two weeks for a full refund.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    That works pretty well for a full-time student, but two points... - If you're working/raising a kid/whatever, you don't necessarily have the time to drop into classes that might be full. There is likely a non-zero number of people who see their preferred section is full and don't move beyond that (people taking one-off classes, or slowly working through a professional certificate). - That's a lot of extra mental bandwidth for all involved. Yeah, it works, but life would be better if it wasn't the norm.
pbohun 2y ago
Whose money do you think is being sent to scammers? Also, decent human beings care about things that are unjust/immoral/unethical regardless if it affects them or not.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  > Whose money do you think is being sent to scammers? I guess the tax payers money? Otherwise they would have nipped this in the bud. > Also, decent human beings care about things that are unjust/immoral/unethical regardless if it affects them or not. Decent people are sometimes quite far between, most people would never lift a finger even an inch if they don't have anything to gain personally.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    > most people would never lift a finger even an inch if they don't have anything to gain personally. Personally, I haven't found that to be the case. If you've got sources that say otherwise I'd be interested in seeing them.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Well, we’re focused on extracting as much money as possible from people who try to pay loans with awful terms. Meanwhile, the banks have no incentive to do meaningful vetting as the loans are guaranteed.
- mopenstein 2y ago
  Like stealing money under threat of force from many individuals and handing it over to some random scammer? That kind of immoral act? You might not be as decent a person as you might think.
jancsika 2y ago
> Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she’d normally drop three to five from her roster who don’t start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. Key word: "popular." A dean's most important question: "How are we gonna pay the bills?" Well, if the number of ghost students in a department's popular class just doubled and eventually get dropped from the roll, that means the number of bona fide students completing that class also went down. If you're the professor of that class, you want to make it crystal clear to the dean that this is an otherwise popular class getting hit by a scam, and not a class that's organically becoming less popular year over year. Communicating this distinction to the dean is paramount-- the prof's pay and job stability depends on the scam being addressed for next quarter/semester. And those concerns bubble up from dept dean up the administration. I mean, as I write this I start to wonder the opposite of you-- how could anyone in this chain of authority not prioritize addressing this issue?
nh23423fefe 2y ago
Some people take pride in their work.
setr 2y ago
The lost money comes from the taxpayer. But that loan money was going to be used to pay the school; and presumably if the student doesn’t have that loan money, they ain’t gonna be paying (or attending, because they can no longer afford to do so). So schools should care. And the students should care — they don’t get to join the school. And the government should care — their funds just went into a void. And the taxpayers should care — their money just went into a void, and some number of their kids just got denied college access. What involved party shouldn’t care?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think they're making a cynical comment about incentives and government waste. There's some truth to this if the people in charge of the process are not the ones paying. I've seen gratuitous waste in government due to indifference. It can happen in the private sector too.
- permo-w 2y ago
  >The lost money comes from the taxpayer not necessarily
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > But that loan money was going to be used to pay the school; and presumably if the student doesn’t have that loan money, they ain’t gonna be paying (or attending, because they can no longer afford to do so). So schools should care. I don't think this is a correct model of the situation. As far as I know, it isn't the case that there's a fixed budget for student loan disbursals and all of it will go to some school or other unless it gets stolen. Rather, if more people ask for student loans, more money gets disbursed, and if fewer people ask for loans, less money gets disbursed. So the amount of money the school gets wouldn't be affected.

alistairSH 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.

harvey9 2y ago

Probably course completion rates and other metrics that make your service eligible for loans in the first place.

nine_k 2y ago
If course completion rate becomes the metric that brings in money, it will quickly soar to 100% or maybe above. See: Goodhart's Law.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Well, that's kind of the whole idea behind college, isn't it...
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    It becomes meaningless when the professors are pressured to pass failing students to make the numbers look good.
    - Akronymus 2y ago
      Like what happens with lower schools under the "no child left behind" doctrine?
- harvey9 2y ago
  I was thinking of students who dropped out. It's a different fraud if the institution is claiming re-enrollments that never happened.

autoexec 2y ago

Students aren't able to get into classes when bots are taking all the spots. Teachers actually care about educating students so they don't want to have their time wasted by bots. There's only so much loan money to go around and the schools want to get that cash into their own pockets, but the schools don't get any when scammers are running off with it to funnel money to other countries or whatever else they're doing. Similarly, students who really need the help can't get it when it all goes to someone who isn't interested in paying for education. Schools have another problem with "ghost students" in general which is that there's a lot of other stuff going on at schools that depend on real students being there. Vendors, club activities, sporting/social events, nearby bars and restaurants etc. There's an entire ecosystem on and around campus which is created or supported by real students. All that non-classroom stuff helps make the school more attractive to students and often directly generates income for the school as well, but little of it would exist or be worthwhile if the campus is a ghost town.

toast0 2y ago
When I was at community college (~ 2000), if the section you wanted was full at registration, you'd register in another section (in case), but show up at the section you wanted and talk with the instructor. Depending on the course/instructor, you'd might need to show up for the first week and anybody who hadn't attended in the first week would be dropped and those who had attended but weren't registered could take those spaces. Sometimes the instructor would do that at the first meeting. You'd go to the section you were registered in as well, and let the instructor know there (sometimes it'd be the same instructor and then maybe you wouldn't need to attend both sections). Not ideal, but registration order was based on completed credits, and after one semester it got a lot easier to get into the sections you wanted; students (real or not) that haven't completed any classes get to pick sections last, so once you've shown you're willing and able to complete classes, you're good. (Protip: check if taking any class in the summer will help you get into the sections you want in the fall) At that time, you could drop classes in the first two weeks for a full refund.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  That works pretty well for a full-time student, but two points... - If you're working/raising a kid/whatever, you don't necessarily have the time to drop into classes that might be full. There is likely a non-zero number of people who see their preferred section is full and don't move beyond that (people taking one-off classes, or slowly working through a professional certificate). - That's a lot of extra mental bandwidth for all involved. Yeah, it works, but life would be better if it wasn't the norm.

pbohun 2y ago

Whose money do you think is being sent to scammers? Also, decent human beings care about things that are unjust/immoral/unethical regardless if it affects them or not.

carlosjobim 2y ago
> Whose money do you think is being sent to scammers? I guess the tax payers money? Otherwise they would have nipped this in the bud. > Also, decent human beings care about things that are unjust/immoral/unethical regardless if it affects them or not. Decent people are sometimes quite far between, most people would never lift a finger even an inch if they don't have anything to gain personally.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > most people would never lift a finger even an inch if they don't have anything to gain personally. Personally, I haven't found that to be the case. If you've got sources that say otherwise I'd be interested in seeing them.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Well, we’re focused on extracting as much money as possible from people who try to pay loans with awful terms. Meanwhile, the banks have no incentive to do meaningful vetting as the loans are guaranteed.
mopenstein 2y ago
Like stealing money under threat of force from many individuals and handing it over to some random scammer? That kind of immoral act? You might not be as decent a person as you might think.

jancsika 2y ago

> Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she’d normally drop three to five from her roster who don’t start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. Key word: "popular." A dean's most important question: "How are we gonna pay the bills?" Well, if the number of ghost students in a department's popular class just doubled and eventually get dropped from the roll, that means the number of bona fide students completing that class also went down. If you're the professor of that class, you want to make it crystal clear to the dean that this is an otherwise popular class getting hit by a scam, and not a class that's organically becoming less popular year over year. Communicating this distinction to the dean is paramount-- the prof's pay and job stability depends on the scam being addressed for next quarter/semester. And those concerns bubble up from dept dean up the administration. I mean, as I write this I start to wonder the opposite of you-- how could anyone in this chain of authority not prioritize addressing this issue?

nh23423fefe 2y ago

Some people take pride in their work.

setr 2y ago

The lost money comes from the taxpayer. But that loan money was going to be used to pay the school; and presumably if the student doesn’t have that loan money, they ain’t gonna be paying (or attending, because they can no longer afford to do so). So schools should care. And the students should care — they don’t get to join the school. And the government should care — their funds just went into a void. And the taxpayers should care — their money just went into a void, and some number of their kids just got denied college access. What involved party shouldn’t care?

s1artibartfast 2y ago
I think they're making a cynical comment about incentives and government waste. There's some truth to this if the people in charge of the process are not the ones paying. I've seen gratuitous waste in government due to indifference. It can happen in the private sector too.
permo-w 2y ago
>The lost money comes from the taxpayer not necessarily
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> But that loan money was going to be used to pay the school; and presumably if the student doesn’t have that loan money, they ain’t gonna be paying (or attending, because they can no longer afford to do so). So schools should care. I don't think this is a correct model of the situation. As far as I know, it isn't the case that there's a fixed budget for student loan disbursals and all of it will go to some school or other unless it gets stolen. Rather, if more people ask for student loans, more money gets disbursed, and if fewer people ask for loans, less money gets disbursed. So the amount of money the school gets wouldn't be affected.