Digital Identity Verification for Education

Since education went remote, schools, universities, and online learning platforms have been facing new challenges: fake enrollments, exam cheating, and chronic absenteeism. Fraudulent students siphon off funds meant for real learners, while impersonation during online exams undermines academic integrity. Even in traditional classrooms, proxy attendance and teacher absenteeism remain long-standing problems.

To address these issues, many institutions are turning to digital identity verification for education. From verifying students during enrollment to ensuring exam integrity and tracking attendance, modern verification tools are becoming essential. In this article, we’ll explore how these technologies work, why they matter, and what privacy questions they raise. We’ll also look at real-world solutions to ID verification in online education, along with their benefits and controversies.

Why Identity Verification in Education Is Crucial

Identity checks in education may not seem as critical as in finance, travel, or gambling. Yet, to safeguard academic integrity, more universities and schools are embracing verification systems. Here are the key reasons why.

Ghost Students

Fake student accounts are a growing problem. Fraudsters use stolen or synthetic identities to enroll phantom students, secure grants or scholarships, and disappear without ever attending. Beyond financial losses, these fake accounts can also gain access to institutional systems, emails, or VPNs.

The scale of the problem is striking. In 2024, California colleges uncovered more than 1.2 million fraudulent applications, including over 223,000 fake community college enrollments. To counter this, federal student aid applicants must now present a valid government photo ID (either in person or via live video), with records kept for audits.

Cheating by Impersonation

With online learning on the rise, exam impersonation has become a top concern. Many tutorials openly explain how to cheat on remote exams by having someone else log in as the student.

To prevent this, institutions require students to show a government-issued photo ID to the webcam and take a selfie before starting a test. The system compares the live image to the enrolled student’s records, ensuring that the person behind the screen is legitimate.

Absenteeism

Absenteeism by students and even teachers has long plagued education systems. In some regions, school funding and teacher pay are directly tied to attendance, which makes accuracy essential. Traditional roll calls are easy to fake, but biometric verification makes proxy attendance nearly impossible.

For example, schools in Uttar Pradesh, India, reported a sharp rise in attendance when they introduced facial recognition systems for daily check-ins.

ID Verification in Offline Education

Biometric attendance systems are one of the most visible trends in offline education. Facial recognition cameras or fingerprint readers are increasingly replacing roll calls and ID cards.

The concept isn’t new: back in 1997, Eagan High School in Minnesota piloted fingerprint readers, though only for library book checkouts. Today, many schools in South Asia use facial recognition for attendance tracking. Telangana, India, even launched a mobile app that requires students and teachers to snap a classroom selfie, which is then automatically verified against stored face data.

In Europe, however, such practices have met strong resistance. In Sweden, a school was fined €20,000 for violating privacy laws when it trialed facial recognition attendance. Regulators ruled that underage students cannot freely consent to surveillance, and less invasive alternatives must always be considered.

Other experimental uses—such as facial recognition for cashless cafeteria payments in Scotland or AI-powered attentiveness monitoring at U.S. colleges—have also sparked concerns about overreach and student privacy.

ID Verification in Online Education

Remote learning platforms also rely heavily on identity checks. When enrolling, students may be required to upload an ID and selfie. For instance, Pearson VUE partnered with Regula to automatically verify ID authenticity and detect mismatches between the ID photo and a live selfie. Platforms like Coursera require similar checks for students seeking certificates, ensuring that the person who completed the coursework matches the name on the diploma.

Online exams add another layer: remote proctoring. Students show their ID to the camera, capture a live photo, and remain under webcam monitoring for the duration of the test. Some universities, like SUNY Downstate, record both the ID and the student’s face throughout the exam.

However, deepfake technology is raising new challenges, as synthetic videos could potentially fool verification systems. That’s why advanced solutions, such as Regula Face SDK, now include both active and passive liveness detection—ensuring that the system interacts with a real person rather than a manipulated video.

How Regula Powers Identity Verification in Education

From classroom attendance to remote proctoring, identity verification is steadily becoming a standard in education. Still, it must be applied responsibly, with full respect for privacy laws, especially when minors are involved.

Regula offers robust solutions tailored to educational needs:

• Regula Document Reader SDK: Authenticates ID documents in both offline and online scenarios.
• Regula Face SDK: Provides instant facial recognition and advanced protection against presentation attacks such as photos, masks, or video replays.

By combining document checks with liveness detection, Regula enables schools, universities, and e-learning platforms to build secure, trustworthy systems without compromising user experience.