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As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond
Voice of San Diego
Jakob McWhinney
April 14, 2025
Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. While it has caused chaos at many colleges, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to curb the crisis.
When the spring semester began, Southwestern College professor Elizabeth Smith felt good. Two of her online classes were completely full, boasting 32 students each. Even the classes’ waitlists, which fit 20 students, were maxed out. That had never happened before.
“Teachers get excited when there’s a lot of interest in their class. I felt like, ‘Great, I’m going to have a whole bunch of students who are invested and learning,’’ Smith said. “But it quickly became clear that was not the case.”
By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots.
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Read MoreData: Gen Z Wary of AI Effects, Wants More Guidance From School, Work
Inside Higher Education
Ashley Mowreader
April 14, 2025
A recent Gallup survey finds that young people frequently engage with generative AI and want support from schools and employers about how to properly use those tools.
Gen Z Americans are known for being tech-savvy digital natives, but a new survey shows they’re hesitant about the impact of the evolving world of generative AI.
Recently published data from Gallup, supported by the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures, found that the average young person (age 13 to 28) is skeptical about the effects of generative AI on their critical thinking and creativity, despite engaging regularly with the tools and seeing their importance for the future.
K-12 students want clear guidelines on when to use generative AI in their coursework and more education on how to use AI to prepare them for work. Gen Z adults currently in the workforce report a lack of guidance on when or how to use generative AI, revealing a lack of training along their career pathways.
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