Salt Lake City – September 15, 2026 -- Instructure has partnered with identity verification provider Veriff to build identity checks directly into Parchment by Instructure Transcript Services, targeting fraud that has cost U.S. community colleges $180 million in a single year through so-called "ghost student" schemes.
Parchment network spans 6,200 colleges and 6,700 K-12 schools
Parchment operates the largest academic credential network in the world, connecting more than 6,200 colleges and universities with 6,700 K-12 schools and districts, and has exchanged over 165 million credentials to date. The new verification layer places identity checks at the point of credential issuance, inside the same network institutions already use to send transcripts.
Fraudsters exploit stolen identities to collect financial aid and fake credentials
According to Equifax, citing U.S. Department of Education findings, fraudsters enroll under stolen or fabricated identities, collect financial aid, then disappear, in some cases ordering transcripts under someone else's name to apply for admission and aid elsewhere. Instructure says AI tools have lowered the cost of producing convincing fake documents, scaling fraudulent requests faster than manual, order-by-order review can handle.
Veriff checks government ID against live selfie before order is fulfilled
Institutions activate identity verification at the account level within Parchment. When a learner creates an account or places an order, Veriff matches a government-issued ID against a live selfie; Parchment then assigns a verification status and confidence score to route the order. Trusted orders are approved automatically, while suspicious ones are held for staff review. Veriff supports more than 12,500 document types across over 230 countries and territories, including passports, national ID cards and driver's licenses. Parchment stores only verification status and metadata, not biometric data.
Registrars retain final approval authority over flagged orders
Institutions set their own confidence thresholds, and staff decide the outcome for any order held for review rather than facing automatic denial. Learners without a government-issued ID can defer verification, and those signing in via single sign-on or an institution-issued token skip the extra step automatically.
"Fraud is evolving faster than the legacy systems that most institutions rely on were built to handle," said Brian Cully, senior vice president of finance and strategy at Instructure, noting that registrars currently spend hours manually reviewing orders because they lack a scalable way to confirm an account holder's identity.
Pilot launched in August, general U.S. availability set for November 2026
Identity Verification for Parchment Transcript Services entered a pilot program in August 2026 with a small group of higher education institutions. General availability is planned for November 2026 in the United States, with a later phase expected to add step-up verification for high-risk account changes such as name and date-of-birth updates.