Colleges are confronting a persistent rise in “ghost students” and application fraud that siphons financial aid and strains campus systems. During and after the pandemic, fraud actors exploited weak verification processes to enroll fictitious students, collect federal and state aid, and submit AI‑generated coursework. IT and financial‑aid teams now face the task of hardening identity checks, tightening payment and disbursement controls, and detecting synthetic enrollment patterns with analytics. Campus IT leaders recommend layered defenses: identity‑verification vendors, behavioral analytics across registration and LMS activity, fraud triage workflows tied to financial‑aid offices, and stronger collaboration with auditors and law enforcement. The problem affects institutional finance, compliance, and classroom capacity planning when seats are occupied by non‑bona fide students. Why it matters: Fraud erodes federal aid integrity, can trigger audits and clawbacks, and undermines institutional finances and student services; IT teams are now central to institutional risk management.