In an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie discusses how US institutions are addressing the phenomenon of “fake students” or “ghost students” in online courses. These fraudsters enrol in courses in order to take advantage of financial aid and/or use an official email address to conduct phishing scams. With AI, McMurtrie writes, these students can disguise themselves further by taking part in class assignments and quizzes. McMurtrie highlights a variety of ways that faculty members and staff are attempting to identify and deal with these fraudsters, such as by manually reviewing certain applicants during the enrolment process or requiring students to attend a video call at the start of the course. She further discusses some of the state-wide and federal efforts underway to protect the US education system from this fraud.
