Fake Students Plague California Community Colleges, Displacing Real Enrollees
6th September 2025
California’s community colleges are grappling with a surge in fraudulent enrollments, with 1.2 million fake applicants last year accounting for nearly 30 percent of new students, blocking real students from classes and costing millions in stolet financial aid, according to college officials.
The two essential functions of government are the keep people safe and keep people honest. Democrats seem congenitally inept at both.
The problem, exacerbated by the shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, affects at least 90 of the state’s 116 campuses, said Marvin Martinez, chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District, and Jeannie Kim, president of Santiago Canyon College.
Before the pandemic, most classes were in-person, making fraud more difficult, Martinez said. But with 80 percent of courses moving online, bots and fake students can enroll from anywhere, including other states or countries.
How is this possible? In Indiana, the only place where I ever went to a ‘public school’, you had to submit a class schedule that was checked against the master computer list of students who were enrolled and had paid their fees. If you weren’t on the list, your proposed schedule went into the trash. California public employees must be truly incompetent.