A former tenured professor at Bakersfield College, Matthew Garrett is the founder of Renegade Institute for Liberty, an organization dedicated to promoting intellectual diversity. He launched the California Curriculum Center shortly after retiring from academia to offer nonpartisan curricula for independent educators and charter schools.
In 1787, Prince Grigory Potemkin orchestrated a grand tour of Crimea for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, lining the route with fake villages and staged scenes to create the illusion of prosperity in newly conquered lands. Today, California’s community colleges do much the same—propped up by tax dollars, driven by inflated metrics, and desperate to project credibility. In a determined bid to showcase success, the system has become a playground for fraud—more focused on gaming state incentives than educating students.
In December 2023, the National Review revealed that fraudsters had created hundreds of thousands of fake student accounts to siphon off financial aid from California’s community college system. Yet somehow, state administrators dodged all accountability. In the months since, the scope of fraud has only become more alarming.
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Now a congressional coalition led by Rep. Young Kim is drawing overdue attention to the crisis. Data suggests that fully one-third of applicants to the California Community College system last year may have been fabricated identities used to harvest over $13 million in federal funds and state aid. That’s not a glitch. That’s a policy failure on an industrial scale.
How did this happen?
California’s community colleges long operated on a flawed funding model that rewarded enrollment over outcomes and emphasized inclusion over accountability. Most students pay little or nothing, thanks to the Board of Governors tuition waiver, while federal Pell Grant support doles out thousands more per student. That may sound noble—until you realize no one is checking whether those students attend class or even exist.
Many hardworking students depend on these supports—but others candidly admit they enroll solely for the aid money. A student once told me he used the funds for his Vegas trip each semester. Despite such abuse, colleges made no effort to correct the system or hold anyone accountable. Why would they? As long as someone enrolled, classes appeared full, administrators looked successful, and the institution got paid.
To its credit, California partially restructured college funding to reward degree and certificate completion—but it created new problems in the process. Self-reported success now drives grade inflation and the creation of meaningless certificates that trigger extra payouts. Campuses are further incentivized to enroll students who are incarcerated, illegal immigrants, rural, and low income. In some cases, courses are needlessly relocated to rural satellite campuses—not to serve students now forced to commute, but to maximize funding streams tied to geography. The result is a system more focused on funding metrics than meaningful education.
Fraud and abuse are only the most visible symptoms of a deeper problem: California’s community college system has become untethered from academic seriousness and basic oversight. The core mission—educating and empowering students—has been replaced by a relentless obsession with manipulating metrics.
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Instead of focusing on quality, the state is doubling down on quantity. In 2023, newly appointed Chancellor Sonya Christian announced a plan to enroll every California ninth grader in college courses. Her Vision 2030 initiative claims this agenda is about equity, but it seems more like a scheme to capture additional funding by enrolling students who are academically and developmentally unprepared.
California has built a nanny-state model of education—one that prioritizes equity over achievement and profits over pupils. The greatest victims are the students who actually want to learn but are trapped in a hollow system—a modern Potemkin village—where surface-level metrics and favored demographics prop up the illusion of success.
If California wants to salvage its community colleges, it must stop throwing money at a system that measures success by how many names appear on a spreadsheet. Funding should follow genuine engagement—attendance, progress, completion—and reflect real educational outcomes, not inflated metrics or manufactured credentials. Institutions must be judged by whether they elevate students, not how well they manipulate funding formulas.
Because right now, the only thing California’s community college system is teaching… is how to game the system.
Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
