A ghost student is a digital thief who applies to colleges and universities to steal federal financial aid and/or gain access to academic content and resources (i.e., intellectual property) they can exploit. Obtaining an .edu email domain will also enable them to receive student discounts for software, airfare, etc.
Since 2020, the use of online learning has dramatically increased and with it ghost students, taking seats away from legitimate students, impacting the credit of the stolen individual’s identity and draining the institution of staffing resources.
These thieves use a mix of real and fake data to create fake student profiles, AI has enabled the applications to be filled out in seconds versus the 20-30 minutes per actual student application. In 2024, one in three applicants were fake, and in the past five years, the federal government has investigated more than $350 million in fraud.
The following guidelines will assist in decreasing this threat in your landscape.
Detection and Prevention
- U.S. Dept of Education is now requiring identity verification for first-time FAFSA students.
- Manual review red flags:
- General inconsistency in details about background, major, etc.
- Review the home address, high school address and contact’s area code for consistency.
- Addresses are linked to mail drops or vacant lots.
- HS graduation and age dates do not match.
- Misspellings of high school, etc.
- Inconsistency on HS graduation data – not the normal months (Jan, May, June).
- Application submitted close to financial aid disbursement date.
- Several applicants share the same contact information.
- Bulk submission patterns: several different applicants with near-identical timing.
- Government ID is low-resolution/recompressed to obscure detail.
- Students sharing the same refund account.
- Academic red flags:
- Student never logs into LMS within first two weeks.
- No interaction with online tools.
- No response to outreach (email, online chat, phone, etc.) from instructor.
- Never picked up campus ID.
- Sudden, unexplained withdrawal from all courses shortly after the financial aid disbursement date.
- Proactive steps:
- Attendance and engagement validation: Require early course check-ins to confirm student participation. AI-based pattern recognition can flag anomalies in class activity, assignment uploads or test-taking behaviors.
- Digital identity verification: multifactor authentication linked to verified phone numbers or addresses. Require a third-party ID verification.
- Monitor the velocity of applications (high volume from one source in a short time).
- Implement identity fraud software which uses machine learning and predictive analytics to differentiate between ghost students and legitimate applicants.
- IP and device tracking: Use network and analysis tools to detect clusters of applications or class access from the same device, IP address, unusual geographies or proxy/VPN services.
- Fraud response unit: Establish a team across security, financial aid, registrar, audit/compliance, legal and student affairs to centralize and coordinate reporting and mitigate issues.
- Training: provide fraud awareness training for staff.
Trends
- Re-admit fraud – Submitting a new application using graduated valid student information. The institution’s system recognizes the core data and assumes it is a legitimate returning student and flags them as a “re-admit” bypassing some security controls.
- Bad actors offering to split the money for insider assistance.
Creating a culture implementing tools and knowledge to recognize known patterns and red flags will empower your entire team to quickly remediate the threat.