Tag: Putting

3 threats putting student safety at risk

Key points:

In today’s schools, whether K-12 or higher education, AI is powering smarter classrooms. There’s more personalized learning and faster administrative tasks. And students themselves are engaging with AI more than ever before, as 70 percent say they’ve used an AI tool to alter or create completely new images. But while educators and students are embracing the promise of AI, cybercriminals are exploiting it.

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Education reported that nearly 150,000 suspect identities were flagged in recent federal student-aid forms, contributing to $90 million in financial aid losses tied to ineligible applicants. From deepfakes in admissions to synthetic students infiltrating online portals and threatening high-value research information, AI-powered identity fraud is rising fast, and our educational institutions are alarmingly underprepared.

As identity fraud tactics become more scalable and convincing, districts are now racing to deploy modern tools to catch fake students before they slip through the cracks. Three fraud trends keep IT and security leaders in education up at night–and AI is supercharging their impact.

1. Fraud rings targeting education

Here’s the hard truth: Fraudsters operate in networks, but most schools fight fraud alone.

Coordinated rings can deploy hundreds of synthetic identities across schools or districts. These groups recycle biometric data, reuse fake documents, and share attack methods on dark web forums.

To stand a fair chance in the fight, educational institutions must work with identity verification experts that enable a holistic view of the threat landscape through cross-transactional risk assessments. These assessments spot risk patterns across devices, IP addresses, and user behavior, helping institutions uncover fraud clusters that would be invisible in isolation.

2. Deepfakes and injected selfies in remote enrollment

Facial recognition was once a trusted line of defense for remote learning and test proctoring. But fraudsters can now use emulators and virtual cameras to bypass those checks, inserting AI-generated faces into the stream to impersonate students. In education, where student data is a goldmine and systems are increasingly remote, the risk is even more pronounced.

In virtual work environments, for example, enterprises are already seeing an uptick in the use of deepfakes during job interviews. By 2028, Gartner predicts 1 in 4 job candidates worldwide will be fake. The same applies to the education sector. We’re now seeing fake students, complete with forged government IDs and a convincing selfie, slide past systems and into financial aid pipelines.

So, what’s the fix? Biometric identity intelligence, trusted by a growing number of students, can verify micro-movements, lighting, and facial depth, and confirm whether a real human is behind the screen. Multimodal checks (combining visual, motion, and even audio data) are critical for stopping AI-powered identity fraud.

3. Synthetic students in your systems

Unlike stolen identities, synthetic identities are crafted from real–and fake–fragments, such as a legit SSN combined with a fake name. These “students” can pass enrollment checks, get campus credentials, and even apply for financial aid.

Traditional document checks aren’t enough to catch them. Today’s identity verification tools must use AI to detect missing elements, like holograms or watermarks, and flag patterns including identical document backgrounds, which is a key sign of industrial-scale fraud.

AI-powered identity intelligence for education

As digital learning becomes the norm and AI accelerates, identity fraud will only get more sophisticated. However, AI also offers educators a solution.

By layering biometrics, behavioral analytics, and cross-platform data, schools can verify student identities at scale and in real time, keeping pace with advancing threats, and even staying one step ahead.

Ashwin Sugavanam, Jumio Corporation

Ashwin Sugavanam is currently the VP, AI & Identity Analytics at Jumio Corporation. Ashwin is a visionary Data and Analytics leader with two decades of overall experience out of which he has spent the last decade in helping organizations incubate and scale Data & AI practices. Over the last couple of years Ashwin has helped organizations drive measurable business outcomes by responsibly scaling Data and AI initiatives, implementing modern concepts like Data Mesh and MLOps, and leveraging tools such as the Data Scientist Co-Pilot to accelerate impact. He can be reached on LinkedIn and at the company website https://www.jumio.com/ .

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December 17, 2025
Rising to the political moment means universities putting down deep and meaningful roots in their places

For the past twelve months, the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement has been leading a project to reimagine the future of the engaged university: Engaged Futures. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, taking in everything from the baked-in prejudices of our sector, to debating the very purpose of higher education.

And it feels that this is the right time to ask that question, as universities seek to change, diversify, remodel and restructure. What is the purpose at the heart of our universities? Is it the same regardless of type, or size, or age of institution? Is it something set in stone at inception, or can it be remoulded by leadership teams?

And crucially, is it fit for purpose?

As a sector we have always talked a good game about being integral to the success of our region, whether we call this place-based, civic or “locally-rooted”, or are badged as an “anchor institution”. Show me a university that hasn’t made this claim.

I would argue that this is the very purpose of the university. Universities should be rooted in their region; responsive and reactive, open and honest; curators of conversations and collaborations; compassionate nurturers; apolitical agents of change.

Cohesion with place

But there is evidence that this work is taking a back seat as the sector grapples with financial challenge and looks for new ways to operate. The National Civic Impact Accelerator report on the “fragile foundations of civic” shone a light on the quiet diminishing of the civic commitment, with work moving under the umbrella of public affairs, or innovation, or marketing. And civic university agreements left on the shelf for later.

It remains to be seen if transformative measures such as mergers, the creations of super universities, takeovers by private providers and (hopefully not) provider closures, take universities further away from this work.

At the Labour party conference, the phrase of the moment was “social cohesion”. Politicians are talking about how to rebuild civic pride – in fact, they are actively directing funds to this. But there is no mention of the role of universities in delivering this type of social impact, despite all the fanfare of the civic movement.

So in this space, let’s consider an alternative transformational model: the local university. Local isn’t a word you hear very often in universities, with “globally-connected”, “world-leading” and “internationally-recognised” being preferred terms.

A local, social purpose university, would build on the university centre model we have seen operate effectively in cold spots such as Scarborough.

But I would take this one step further, envisaging an institution so deeply knitted into its place, that the campus and community interact seamlessly.

Another kind of merger

As our university campuses have expanded, filled with multimillion-pound pioneering buildings, our high streets have decayed, public spaces have closed and communities have fractured. Local offerings, such as libraries, community centres and even banks have shut up shop.

Rather than developing shared services with another university, perhaps instead a university could merge with its place? There are assets, facilities and buildings that could work for both students and residents. Activities that could leave campus and take place in spaces that would otherwise be closed, to an augmented audience. And costs could be shared with other public sector organisations, providing the much needed savings to the public purse.

Beyond the physical assets, consider business operations – the social purpose university would make intentional decisions about partnerships, procurement, campus developments and ensure that purpose stands alongside profitability. Spending locally, lobbying for improvements in infrastructure, listening and being open to change. There might even be a residents’ panel, feeding into decision-making… or is that a dream too far?

Willingness to change

What would we need for this to be successful? Well, a shift in the success criteria for a start. Like it or not, the metrics that the sector is judged by would need to change, as outcomes for the local university are unlikely to be the same as the super-university. We would need a broader way of speaking about our sector, of acknowledging the ecosystem of higher education that doesn’t slip into hierarchy. And we’d need to be willing to change, evolve and work in genuine co-creation.

Throughout Engaged Futures – a conversation there is still the opportunity to contribute to – we have looked at the art of the possible and are now sketching a blueprint for a different higher education experience.

One which is genuinely inclusive, not simply ticking boxes and publishing policies. One which is accessible to all, without the deep-rooted hierarchies that make it harder for everyone to find their space. One which values all forms of knowledge, wherever and however it is created. One that makes space for compassion, is self-reflective, accepts criticism and challenge.

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October 3, 2025
NIH Fires 4 Directors After Putting Them on Leave

The directors felt they were fired as part of the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion and for political reasons.

Wesley Lapointe/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Four directors at the National Institutes of Health who were placed on administrative leave earlier this year have now been fired, Science reported.

The ousted leaders led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute of Nursing Research. Tara Schwetz, the deputy director for program coordination, planning and strategic initiatives, was also fired. The directors were put on leave in the spring around the same time that the administration laid off thousands at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Science reported that the directors felt they were targeted as part of the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion and for political reasons. Jeanne Marrazzo, the former NIAID director, took over for Anthony Fauci, a frequent target for Republicans who took issue with his approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. Marrazzo filed a whistleblower complaint in early September that in part accused NIH leadership of downplaying the value of vaccines, The New York Times reported.

“It’s not surprising, but it’s still incredibly disappointing,” Marrazzo told Science. “I would have been quite happy to serve under the new administration as long as we were allowed to do our jobs.”

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October 3, 2025