How do you handle students that are not capable of showing up on the first day in-person?
- Live far away
- Have a job they can't just not show up for
- Having children to take care of
- Health issues
There's tons of reasons for people not to be able to attend in person, and not all of them are "because I didn't want to". And, for a _lot_ of those people, improving their education can have a huge impact on their quality of life.
Can’t show up for one day? That is such an incredibly low bar to also ask them to sit through a long series of courses and test. These college colleges are state funded, so if the person is overseas or on the opposite side of the US… then what are we really funding? That’s not the intent of a “community college”.
I would say, not have to show up for Day 1 but how about have to show up at the collage with a state issued ID in order to have funds released to their account?
It looks like the main issue is that the people committing the fraud are able to create student profiles and request student aid with these profiles. I am unsure of California's requirements but this generally requires a SSN. California is issuing Real ID so verification should be relatively easy.
Presumably we would handle that in the same way we did up until ~5 years ago or so.
Right now people can't enrol in "full" classes either, except the classes are "full" of bots.
And a single day of attendance is really not a very high bar to meet. For special cases where it's really a problem accommodations can be made on request.
This only adds a small amount of friction. Some more effective options off the top of my head:
1. free classes but no aid
2. pay covered costs directly
3. tie aid to participation (not performance)
You could argue someone could still scam the system by attending the class and submiting AI-generated content or just copying others, but this is much more involved. Some of the blame has to land on the distance programs of the institutions. They've become overly relient on charging full tuition for much cheaper online delivery, and don't care too much about the "community" part of college anymore.
That might not always work. There is a huge issue of Lyft and Uber drivers showing up the first day, passing all the background checks, etc. then selling their account to someone else to take their place. Maybe better is to show up first day, and to do random ID checks throughout the semester. It feels.. unfriendly and accusatory to do that but I'm not sure of the alternative...
.. but if we wanted to be a little Orwellian.. put cameras and facial recognition in the classrooms to take automatic attendance and to identify students who should not be there, or who may be missing for prolonged absences. That'll go over really well....
RHSeeger|10 months ago
- Live far away
- Have a job they can't just not show up for
- Having children to take care of
- Health issues
There's tons of reasons for people not to be able to attend in person, and not all of them are "because I didn't want to". And, for a _lot_ of those people, improving their education can have a huge impact on their quality of life.
ethagknight|10 months ago
themaninthedark|10 months ago
It looks like the main issue is that the people committing the fraud are able to create student profiles and request student aid with these profiles. I am unsure of California's requirements but this generally requires a SSN. California is issuing Real ID so verification should be relatively easy.
arp242|10 months ago
Right now people can't enrol in "full" classes either, except the classes are "full" of bots.
And a single day of attendance is really not a very high bar to meet. For special cases where it's really a problem accommodations can be made on request.
disambiguation|10 months ago
skeeter2020|10 months ago
1. free classes but no aid 2. pay covered costs directly 3. tie aid to participation (not performance)
You could argue someone could still scam the system by attending the class and submiting AI-generated content or just copying others, but this is much more involved. Some of the blame has to land on the distance programs of the institutions. They've become overly relient on charging full tuition for much cheaper online delivery, and don't care too much about the "community" part of college anymore.
FrustratedMonky|10 months ago
When really the discussion should be around how bots have become good enough to pass as students. And what can we do about verification.
Molitor5901|10 months ago
.. but if we wanted to be a little Orwellian.. put cameras and facial recognition in the classrooms to take automatic attendance and to identify students who should not be there, or who may be missing for prolonged absences. That'll go over really well....