By Zach Bradley
College of Southern Nevada implemented a new attendance policy fall 2024 that required students to participate in classes during the first week of term or get kicked out of class.
“Students who without previous arrangement with the instructor or department who fail to attend the first two class meetings of a course that meets multiple times per week or the first meeting of a class that meets one time per week may be administratively withdrawn from the course,” according to CSN’s Course Registration and Withdrawal Policy.
A big reason for this new policy is to curtail ghost-student enrollment.
According to Andy Viano, reporter for EdTech, which focuses on higher education, “Ghost students, as their name implies, aren’t real people. They are aliases or stolen identities used by scammers and the bots they deploy to get accepted to a college, but not for the purpose of attending classes or earning a degree.”
“A ghost student is created when a fraudster… enrolls in classes,” Viano noted. “At that point, the fraudster behind the ghost student can use the fake identity to act like a regular student. He or she can access and abuse cloud storage provided by the institution, or use a college-provided VPN or .edu email address to perpetrate other scams. In the most serious cases, a ghost student’s new enrollment status may be used to apply for and receive thousands of dollars in financial aid.”
The new policy helped with the rise in students who ghost their classes [purposefully or not] at CSN, according to Vice President of Academic Affairs James McCoy. “Course completion rates are increasing, and engagement and relationships between faculty and student is increasing for the better,” McCoy said. “Those things are natural outputs of having a participation requirement on week one.”
Plus, the fraudsters are kicked out.
In an April 24 letter shared by the U.S. House Committee on Education and The Workforce, lawmakers voiced their concerns to The Department of Education regarding fraudulent student activity.
“We write to express our concerns about an issue that continues to plague the federal student financial-aid system: student aid fraud. Loosely affiliated groups of criminals have been exploiting low cost or free programs by using the identities of others — with or without their consent — to obtain federal student aid fraudulently,” the letter noted.
The letter added that community colleges in California have already lost over $5 million to fraudulent students since 2021.
McCoy said he wants students to know, “Your participation is vital to your success.”
CSN student Ethan Ranck said that he received emails issued by the Office of Financial Aid at the start of the fall semester notifying of mandatory class participation in the first week. He initially thought the emails were unusual but now Ranck said he understood why he received them.
“I find this to be a good solution to the abuse of financial aid, as it removes the problem and prevents it from reoccurring,” Ranck said.
CSN student Cylara Williams said, ghost students — whether individuals or bots — are honestly sad. “I think the College should protect their students and administration at all costs.”
The new attendance policy can be found at https://www.csn.edu/sites/default/files/documents/policies-and-procedures/2024.05-Course-Registration-and-Withdrawal-Policy.pdf.
Coyote Student News at the College of Southern Nevada 