Bots are taking financial aid from Bakersfield College

Cecilia Trevino
·2 min read

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — The financial aid application period is live at Bakersfield College and the institution hosted a resource fair to kickstart things.

The season kicked off with the Financial Aid Fest, which greatly supports the college’s students with resources.

“85% of our population qualifies for financial aid, it is not just for low income residents,” said Jennifer Achan, Executive Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships at BC. “It’s for a journey towards education.”

At Bakersfield College, students can also get aid for rent, food, medical expenses, transportation and even a computer and Wi-Fi. Some students have noticed a silent thief taking these resources.

“My teacher mentioned that, like for my history class, there were 40 students in the class but on the first day only 12 showed up,” said college student, Francisco Cortez. “He mentioned that there’s a lot of bots that are applying just to get financial aid.”

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Bots are automated internet accounts that can create fake applications for non-existent students in order to siphon financial aid. Leonardo Garcia has seen this happen for the past two years.

“I’ve had it happen to a lot of my classes as well,” said Leonardo Garcia. “They’ll say they’re full but only half of the students show up and it turns out the other half were bots applying for financial aid.”

Both students said those ghost classmates never showed up and BC says the problem increases every semester.

“We do have security checks in place to stop them,” said Achan. “We’re starting with a process, it’s called “ID & Me”, so they need to go through the verification process, and if not then we are asking identification documents to make sure that they are who they say they are.”

Instructors also help report suspected bots by identifying students who don’t attend or participate in classes. The college says it has been successful in getting the money back from the bots and allocating resources to real students.

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