I know for a fact that a lot of colleges advise on how to claim benefit whilst doing a 'part time' course (read full time but 'officially' less than 15 hours per week enabling you to claim benefit), and also that the Benefit Office pretty much turns a blind eye towards this. The reason being? A lot of unemployed people are potentially unemployable but with a college NVQ or Access course in a vocational subject they stand a far greater chance of gaining employment. However, these people often can't afford to sign off and go to college without financial help so without benefits they'd stay as unemployable and unable to train for new skills.
However, claiming £65K in benefits is out of order as per the newspaper report Custard posted. I don't think he was unlucky in claiming that much fraudulently, I'm just surprised it took the Benefit Office Fraud department so long to find out...