From SFGATE
Ghost students are creating an ‘agonizing’ problem for Calif. colleges
By Madilynne Medina
When the pandemic upended the world of higher education, Robin Pugh, a professor at City College of San Francisco, began to see one puzzling problem in her online courses: Not everyone was a real student.
Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she’d normally drop three to five from her roster who don’t start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. But during the current spring semester, Pugh said that number more than doubled when she had to cut 11 students. It’s a strange new reality that has left her baffled...
And with general attacks on higher education funding from the federal government, Nick Merrill, a cybersecurity researcher at UC Berkeley, told SFGATE that colleges will have to keep putting more resources into the problem.
“I don’t really know how we’re going to work our way out of this really serious investment, but I hope that when push comes to shove, we get that investment and not like ‘Sorry, we’re cutting the budget of community colleges again,’” Merrill said...
Nick Merrill graduated from the I School with a Ph.D. in 2018
