Concerns surrounding fraudulent bot enrollment at City College and this school year’s budget were discussed at the College Planning Council (CPC) meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
Paloma Arnold, assistant superintendent-vice president of student affairs, addressed the pressing issue of bots enrolling at City College, as well as in asynchronous classes. These are either robots pretending to be real students in order to take their financial aid, or real students committing identity theft.
Since the increase of fraudulent enrollment, City College has had to instill fraud holds on students who raise flags of being a potential bot.
“We recently put a fraud hold on 1,000 applications, and 600 of them were dropped from all sources, a great catch, and it’s frightening because it just keeps happening,” Arnold said.
These fraudulent enrollments are causing real students at City College to lose a spot in a class, with some bots being harder to catch because they are not only enrolled, but also submitting work. The CPC is considering other methods to reduce fraudulent enrollment, such as having online students come in person to pick up their financial aid check, and calling students who are flagged to confirm their identity.
Superintendent-President Erika Endrijonas went on to cover the three Board of Trustees seats, Veronica Gallardo, Robert K. Miller, and Anna Everett, that will be up for election this November.
City College will not be holding a forum for the six candidates running for these spots, nor will they be organizing anything for the candidates to present themselves to the community due to their duty to remain impartial.
“We have to be really careful, because we are Switzerland, and our job is information sharing,” Endrijonas said. “But whatever the candidates want to do, we have to let the candidates do that. We don’t get involved in that.”
Brian Fahnestock, assistant superintendent-vice president of business services, finished the last half of the meeting presenting the tentative budget for the 2024-2025 school year.
City College is facing an $8.6 million deficit this year, and will be taking money from last year’s budget to put into this year.
“I hope what you’ll take away is that we have an organization that fundamentally costs more than the money that we bring in,” Fahnestock said.
The CPC plans to mitigate this deficit by discussing ways the budget committee can decide what is worth spending money on and what can be cut out. There is also a surplus of $2.5 million in the COVID relief fund, as well as more rental space to Antioch College, which will be aiding the budget crisis.
“This has been a problem for a long time,” Endrijonas said. “We need to come up with ways that decide what is the cake and what is the frosting.”
The CPC will reconvene on Tuesday, Sept. 17.
Correction: September 13, 2024
An earlier version of this story misstated the fact that student identities are being taken as well as their financial aid through fraudulent bots. This is incorrect, no real student identities are being taken and neither is their financial aid through bots.
An earlier version of this story also misstated the fact that City College is taking money from last years budget to put into this years, because of the current deficit. This is incorrect, the college is in a deficit, but the school has revenue from 2023-24 year that is covering a large portion of this years’ deficit.
