TL;DR:
- University hiring runs through multiple channels with different levels of HR involvement. The people responsible for hiring decisions are often not the people responsible for verifying identity.
- Credential fraud is a $21 billion industry. One in three applicants misrepresent their educational qualifications. Deepfakes are passing live interviews.
- No step in the current hiring process confirms that the person who shows up on day one is the same person who interviewed and accepted the offer.
- A fraudulent hire at a university puts research, student data, institutional reputation, and federal funding at risk.
- HR teams don't need a new process. They need one additional step in the existing one.
At most universities, hiring doesn't run through a single centralized process. Faculty, postdocs, visiting researchers, adjuncts, and contracted clinicians may each enter through different channels, with different levels of HR involvement and oversight. The specifics vary by institution. What doesn't vary: the people responsible for hiring decisions are rarely the people responsible for verifying identity.
While that fragmentation has always existed, new threats have put current processes at serious risk. The hiring process at most universities was designed to evaluate qualifications and fit. It does that well. What it was never designed to do is confirm that the person who shows up on day one is the same person who interviewed, passed the background check, and accepted the offer. And right now, no step in the process does.
Universities, with their open hiring culture, global talent pool, and decentralized processes, are structurally easier to infiltrate than most corporations.
Who's Actually Applying
HR teams at universities have always dealt with complexity in the applicant pool. International candidates with credentials from unfamiliar institutions. Degree formats that don't match domestic standards. References from overseas that are harder to verify. Faculty searches that take the better part of a year running alongside last-minute adjunct hiring weeks before the semester. That complexity is familiar.
What's new is the nature of the fraud coming through it.
Credential fraud is now a $21 billion industry, with 25% of job applicants claiming educational credentials they never earned. These are not amateur forgeries. They are professionally produced credentials from operations sophisticated enough to include verification phone lines that confirm the fake degree when an employer calls.
17% of hiring managers have encountered candidates using deepfake technology during interviews. Experian's 2026 Future of Fraud Forecast rates deepfakes outsmarting HR as the second-highest fraud threat of the year. A candidate can sit for a live video interview using a synthetic face matched to a stolen identity, and the interviewer will not be able to tell. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job candidates globally will be fake.
This goes beyond individuals padding a resume. There are now organized operations placing fraudulent workers inside US organizations using stolen identities, fabricated reference networks, and domestic accomplice infrastructure. Universities, with their open hiring culture, global talent pool, and decentralized processes, are structurally easier to infiltrate than most corporations.
What a Fraudulent Hire Puts at Risk
When a bad hire happens at most organizations, the cost is straightforward: wasted salary, time spent investigating, and the expense of replacing them. Nametag's Cost of Doing Nothing report puts that baseline cost for a 15,000-employee educational institution at $1.19M annually.
At a university, the consequences go further.
The institution's reputation. Universities compete for top faculty, students, research grants, and donor relationships. A public incident involving a fraudulent hire or a breach traced back to someone who should never have been on campus makes news. That kind of attention affects the institution's ability to recruit, fundraise, and maintain the trust it has built over decades.
The people HR is responsible for. A fraudulent hire works alongside real faculty, staff, and students. They access shared systems and build professional relationships under false pretenses. When the fraud is discovered, the disruption and breach of trust affects everyone around them.
Federally funded research. A fraudulent hire in a grant-funded role has access to research data and intellectual property funded by US taxpayers. When that work is compromised, the consequences reach the federal agencies that funded it.
Student and employee data. Administrative roles with access to student PII, financial aid records, and payroll data become pathways to the personal information most targeted for synthetic identity theft.
Federal funding and compliance. Under NSPM-33 (National Security Presidential Memorandum 33), universities receiving more than $50M in annual federal research funding must certify compliance with a research security program, including how the institution vets the people it brings in. If a fraudulent hire turns out to be a sanctioned individual, the institution faces federal penalties regardless of intent.
What HR Teams Can Do to Protect the Institution
University HR teams are already managing one of the most complex hiring environments in any industry. Faculty searches that stretch across months. Adjunct hiring that happens in weeks. International credential evaluation. Visa compliance. Union considerations. The solution here is not to overhaul that process. It is to close one question that no current step answers.
Start with the roles where a fraudulent hire causes the most damage. Not every position needs the same level of scrutiny. Roles with access to federally funded research, student financial data, and institutional IT systems carry the highest risk. Visiting researchers and postdocs working in sensitive areas deserve the same identity verification as permanent faculty, even when the timeline is compressed.
Add identity verification before access is granted. Background checks confirm records match a stated history. References confirm that an employment history is plausible. Neither confirms the human presenting those credentials is the person they belong to. Verifying identity before the new hire receives a laptop, network credentials, and system access closes that question.
Make the case to institutional leadership. HR teams are in the strongest position to identify where risk enters the institution. NSPM-33 requires a research security program at institutions receiving more than $50M in federal funding, and visitor vetting is a required element. The framing for that conversation: "Our hiring process verifies qualifications but not identity. Federal funding compliance requires us to address that. Here are the roles we prioritize first." That is a conversation the provost, VP for Research, and CISO all need to be part of.
