Whenever the topics of benefits fraud or means testing come up, there’s always a lot of commentary from people who say it’s more important to deliver aid freely and quickly than to ensure that it’s going to the right people.

Yet this is a perfect example of why that doesn’t work in practice. Fraudsters are drawn to systems without sufficient controls and they will exploit them mercilessly as long as they think they can get away with it.

Worse, aid is infinite and resources are limited. These fake students are blocking actual students from registering for classes and draining away the time of educators and administrators who should be busy running the school, not trying to separate out real and fake students.

Means testing is a dumb idea if we’re administering, for example, a $100 drug test before giving someone $100 in food stamps. However, when we’re handing out $5,000 or more then investing $100-$200 into means testing or manual verification should have been an obvious requirement.

EDIT: People seem to be misinterpreting this article. The aid in question came from the COVID-19 related HEERF funds and CARES act and was distributed directly to applicants. It did not count towards nor subtract from normal financial aid (FAFSA, etc.) meant to pay for the education. It was supposed to be money meant to help students survive outside of education in a faltering COVID economy. Financial aid for actual education would have gone straight to the school and therefore there's no reason for fraudsters to register to consume it.

This is money distributed to students (or fraudsters) via direct deposit. It's different than the aid you're familiar with from past college application experience.