No Aid for Ghost Students Act of 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILEY of California. Mr. Speaker, as a cosponsor of the No Aid for Ghost Students Act, I am very glad that it passed our committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, and I look forward to it receiving bipartisan support on the floor.

Our experience in California has demonstrated the need for this legislation. California community colleges were victimized by a staggering amount of fraud. We learned there were 1.2 million fraudulent applicants. One-third of the applicants were fake.

I talked to my local community college, and they said they noticed something odd going on where they saw this huge spike in applications, three times as many as we normally get.

They said:

We know we are doing a good job, but maybe not that good of a job that the number of applicants suddenly triples.

They actually were on top of things and managed to root out the fraud, but not every community college has the wherewithal and the resources to do that.

The State has been, frankly, kind of missing in action. So myself and some of my colleagues, one of which was Representative Kim, from California, asked the Secretary of Education to institute new identity verification requirements, and this has largely solved the problem.

This bill is simply going to codify those best practices to prevent fraud going forward. This is important because it will save our taxpayers millions of dollars, but also because it will assure that the aid goes where it is really needed.

What these fraudsters were doing was they basically submit fake applications, then get the financial aid and then pocket that portion of the financial aid that was above and beyond room and board for discretionary use by the student. When these funds are going to fraudsters and scam artists, they are not going to the students who really need the aid in our community colleges.

Our community colleges are vital ladders of economic opportunity. They are vitally important to our workforce, and so we need to assure that they do not continue to be victimized by scam artists and fraudsters at the expense of the students who use them as ladders of opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for introducing the measure. I am proud to cosponsor it, and I urge an ``aye'' vote.

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