Ghost Students Are Enrolled Right Now: A Hands-On Workshop on Federal Aid Fraud (Separate registration required.)

At institutions across the country, ghost students are enrolling, collecting federal financial aid refunds, and disappearing before any single office realizes what happened. This hands-on workshop gives cross-functional teams the skills and experience to detect, investigate, and respond to ghost student fraud before it costs their institution. Participants are assigned functional roles, work against a live disbursement deadline, and use realistic fictitious datasets to identify fraud signals across admissions, IT, the registrar, and financial aid. They then collaborate on a Department of Education OIG-aligned fraud case report and leave with practical skills to build a coordinated response at their own institutions. Outcomes of this workshop: Map how ghost student fraud moves across institutional functions and identify data signals and process gaps that allow fraudulent enrollments to reach disbursement undetected. 

Analyze cross-functional student datasets to identify fraudulent enrollment patterns and execute a coordinated institutional response across admissions, IT, registrar, and financial aid. 

Construct a fraud case documentation package aligned to Department of Education OIG reporting requirements and identify institutional process improvements to prevent future fraudulent enrollments. Upon successful completion of this preconference workshop, participants will be eligible to receive an EDUCAUSE microcredential. To earn this digital badge, participants must complete a brief workshop evaluation and share two key learning outcomes from their experience. On October 5, all registered participants will receive an email with instructions for completing these steps. Completion of both is required. To learn how to accept and make the most of the microcredential, visit the EDUCAUSE Microcredential website.