David Barnett
Acting CIO,
Kern Community College District
Fighting Fraud with Artificial Intelligence
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 | 1:00PM–1:45PM CT | Meeting Room 104 CD, Level 1
Session Type:
Breakout Session
Delivery Format:
Presentation/Panel Session
The fraud problem in higher education plagued Kern Community College District, creating problems for students, faculty and staff. Application fraud in education is a significant issue that affects the integrity of the admissions process and will impact class availability and financial aid that students rely on. Types of application fraud include: (1) falsified documents, where applicants might submit fake transcripts, recommendation letters, or other documents to enhance their chances of admission; (2) personal statements and essays plagiarized or written by someone else; and (3) misrepresentation, where applicants might lie about their achievements, extracurricular activities, or personal background. Our colleges were spending so much time manually reviewing documents that they could not help our students. This created issues for registrations, wait-lists, and class availability. We developed a fraud solution as an offshoot of another artificial intelligence project as we found an opportunity to address this issue wreaking havoc on our students and staff. Our process has been very well received by our colleagues in our district, and at this time our solution is helping our students, faculty, and staff. In the previous spring semester, we had approximately 3,500 holds on suspicious activity. The following fall semester, we were at about 100!
