Hundreds of students across California’s community colleges are being denied access to the classes they need, not due to limited availability, but because fraudulent enrollments are occupying seats meant for legitimate students. This growing issue, which expanded during the pandemic, has allowed bad actors to exploit financial aid systems and disrupt the education of those who genuinely rely on these resources.
Enrollment fraud is a widespread and organized operation in which individuals use stolen identities or fabricated student profiles to enroll in courses and receive financial aid. Fraudulent enrollees often take a full course load while deliberately reporting little to no income to maximize financial aid assistance.
This issue directly impacts real students who rely on community colleges for their education. “Our priority is ensuring that students who genuinely need these classes can access them,” said Jesse Gonzalez, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Services. “When fraudsters take up spots, they aren’t just taking money, they’re taking opportunities from students who are working to build their future.”
RSCCD has taken swift, aggressive action to identify and remove fraudulent enrollments but the groundwork for this success began in Fall 2024, when Santiago Canyon College (SCC) emerged as a statewide leader in identifying and responding to the crisis. That semester, bots flooded course rosters, resulting in a dramatic decline in legitimate enrollment and compromising academic integrity. SCC faculty were among the first in the district to raise the alarm, noticing irregular patterns and reporting concerns to administration.
By Spring 2025, SCC had dropped 2,406 fraudulent actors from 8,409 seats and successfully moved 2,312 students into 2,959 seats. Santa Ana College’s (SAC) team had followed suit, dropped over 1,300 potentially fraudulent students and cleared more than 4,000 enrollments. Since the beginning of the spring term, fraudulent enrollments have decreased from over 14,000 to under 3,000, demonstrating that early intervention, faculty vigilance, and proactive administrative action are helping to restore integrity to the system.
While many community colleges across the state are struggling to keep up, RSCCD has invested in proactive fraud detection strategies. The district’s Information Technology Services team has integrated artificial intelligence tools that can identify suspicious data patterns in real time. These tools enable staff to act quickly by clearing rosters, protecting financial aid resources, and moving actual students off waitlists and into available seats.
RSCCD Chancellor Marvin Martinez praised the collective effort across both Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College:
“Our colleges are working diligently to monitor and clear rosters of students who are not active at the beginning of each term. Both SAC and SCC have faced their share of large numbers of potential fraud students, but with the tireless efforts of their respective A&R and Financial Aid teams, we have dropped thousands of potentially fraudulent students and moved thousands of students from the waitlist into open seats, restoring our robust enrollment.”
The results speak for themselves. RSCCD spring enrollment increased its unduplicated headcount, including Adult & Continuing Education, from 55,339 to 60,774 students, marking a 9.77% increase. Full-Time Equivalent Students (FTES) rose from 10,796.13 to 10,957.04, leading to an increase of 1.5% (data as of May 6, 2025).
Faculty continue to play an important role in addressing this issue by clearing rosters of inactive or suspicious students at the beginning of each semester. Their vigilance, combined with advanced technology and cross-department collaboration, has helped RSCCD stay ahead of fraudulent actors and restore access for legitimate students.
Looking forward, the district anticipates significantly lower rates of fraudulent enrollment in upcoming terms thanks to early detection and enrollment holds triggered by red flags identified by AI. While a fully centralized fraud prevention system remains a long-term goal across California’s community college system, RSCCD’s model demonstrates that district-level leadership, innovation, and collaboration can drive real results.
RSCCD remains committed to protecting educational access, safeguarding public resources, and ensuring every classroom seat is filled by a student on a real educational journey.
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