By Adam EchelmanCalMatters
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9 Republican U.S. representatives are calling on U.S. Training Secretary Linda McMahon and U.S. Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi to examine monetary support fraud at California’s group schools. In a separate letter despatched Wednesday, state Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a West Covina Democratrequested the state to conduct its personal audit on the matter.
This uncommon second of bipartisan concern comes after CalMatters reported that pretend group school college students have stolen extra than $10 million in federal monetary support and greater than $3 million in state support within the final 12 months.
Of their April 11 letter to Bondi and McMahon, which cites CalMatters’ reporting, California’s Republican representatives say that investigating fraud at California’s group schools needs to be a part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to “curb wasteful federal spending.”
The California Neighborhood Faculties Chancellor’s Workplace has “not been contacted by the U.S. Department of Education or the U.S. Attorney General about an investigation,” stated Chris Ferguson, one of many workplace’s govt vice chancellors, in an e-mail to CalMatters Thursday.
Assemblymember Rubio’s letter requires a state audit that might study the scope of fraud and the efforts to stop it. State legislators will determine this June whether or not to pursue that audit, which might take years to finish.
California group schools have been struggling to handle pretend college students and monetary support fraud for years. Final spring, CalMatters reported that scammers continued to evade detection and that group schools reported gifting away over $5 million in federal funds and over $1.5 million in state and native support. Earlier this month, CalMatters discovered the issue is simply getting worse.
“Allowing this rise in fraud to go unaddressed is negligent on the Community College system, as these bad actors take away opportunities from real students in impacted courses such as accounting, nursing, etc,” wrote the California Republican representatives of their letter.
Whereas college students, college and group school directors in California agree that it’s a critical and rising downside, they query whether or not an investigation or an audit will result in a greater answer.
Fraud is “a legitimate concern,” stated Larry Galizio, president of the Neighborhood Faculty League of California, which represents the pursuits of the state’s 73 group school districts — however the letter to the training division and the lawyer common is “disingenuous” and “just flat wrong” in claiming that it’s gone unaddressed.
California has allotted greater than $150 million since 2022 to enhance cybersecurity at its group schools.
“Blaming the victim and then cutting resources to the very entities that are trying to combat the fraud is not a policy approach that’s going to be effective,” Galizio stated.
Overwhelmed with the variety of pretend college students of their lessons, “some of our faculty members feel like they’ve been screaming into the void,” stated Stephanie Goldman, govt director of the school affiliation of California Neighborhood Faculties. She stated the federal scrutiny is especially ironic, on condition that the Trump administration has dismantled the U.S. Division of Training and hampered its means to research fraud.
Consultant Younger Kim — who flipped her Orange County district in 2020 — led the trouble to jot down the congressional letter. Her spokesperson, Callie Strock, refused to reply on to criticisms when CalMatters requested about them. She stated Kim continues to be studying concerning the concern and that “California has a long history of abusing taxpayer dollars.”
High precedence: getting cash to college students in want
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the federal authorities has frequently criticized California’s schools and universities. The U.S. Division of Justice is investigating Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine for allegedly discriminating towards college students within the identify of “diversity, equity and inclusion” — despite the fact that affirmative motion has been unlawful in California since 1996. The administration can be going after quite a few UC campuses, in addition to Sacramento State and Santa Monica Faculty, for allegedly permitting “antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”
California is preventing again by working with different states to file quite a few lawsuits, resembling one which makes an attempt to cease the Trump administration from cancelling federal grants and one other to stop the dismantling of the U.S. Division of Training.
However on this occasion, the decision to research California’s larger training system for fraud stems from California’s elected representatives, not from Trump or his cupboard. Kim’s spokesperson didn’t make clear whether or not officers from the Trump administration would truly pursue an investigation.
For Ivan Hernandez, a scholar at Diablo Valley Faculty in Nice Hill, fraud is a low precedence. Hernandez is the president of the group school college students’ affiliation, and whereas he stated he suspects that a number of the college students in his on-line programs are pretend — or at the very least are utilizing AI to submit assignments — he’s extra involved with homelessness and meals insecurity, which have an effect on as many as half of California’s roughly 2 million group school college students.
Monetary support is meant to pay for tuition, however low-income group school college students pay little or no tuition in California, so the cash goes straight into their pockets to offset the state’s excessive value of housing and meals. Most college students who attend California’s group schools are low-income and work a part- or full-time job.
Ferguson, with the state chancellor’s workplace, stated “it’s crucial to emphasize” that many fraudulent college students are stopped earlier than they will enroll. “For the nanoscopic number of criminals that did get past the application stage and moved to the enrollment stage, an even smaller number was able to breach the financial aid stage,” he stated.
“Financial aid fraud in the California Community Colleges system is extremely low relative to the billions of dollars of state and federal aid disbursed — about 0.21% in FY 2023-24. That means 99.8% of financial aid was disbursed to real students in our system.”
This text was initially printed on CalMatters and was republished below the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
