There are a couple reasons why I think it's important for cheating not to be widespread. I've seen The Case Against Education, signalling theory, and all the usual stuff along those lines (well, maybe it's only usual if you have a particularly contrarian friend who never stops talking about it) and while it's made me jaded about where The True Value Of A College Education lies, it didn't make me think "well, it's pointless, so I might as well cheat!"

There are sort of three groups at play here, although the boundaries are fuzzy. Some are truly there to learn, in which case there's not much motivation to cheat. Some are there to get a degree because of its implications in the job market, but don't cheat (for better or for worse). And some are there for the piece of paper and will do whatever it takes to get it. I don't fault these people: maybe they have to maintain a certain GPA for a visa or scholarship, or maybe they got COVID and an inflexible professor told them as of 2022 it's "policy" not to offer extensions "just" because of COVID. At least, I wouldn't fault cheaters were it not for the knock-on effects.

Part of me says the faster we dilute the value of a degree (by granting them to people who cheat their way through) the faster we get rid of the wasteful, cost-disease-ridden, elitist status quo for universities (at least in the US) as the amount of entropy afforded to a prospective employer by the presence of a degree drops to zero. But I also want all the work (and $$$) I have put into getting a degree to mean something. Every time someone cheats their way through a course and, despite their degree or GPA, is less competent on the job because of it, they marginally decrease the school's reputation: if the last person with those credentials wasn't actually that good, why would the next? I'm not sure how much this is happening yet, but I think it will increase in the future if cheating remains easy and common. Even discounting "degree seigniorage", if a professor grades on a curve, obviously students that don't cheat will be at a disadvantage. It's not really correct to say "cheaters don't affect you, just focus on your own work."

So why not have everyone cheat? First of all, some people actually want to learn something. Second of all, I think most people would like it less than I if universities and their degrees lost their cultural and economic cachet. Finally, I can't believe I have to say this, but cheating is inequitable: some are better at cheating than others. In the past (and probably still today, but what do I know) this was frats with banks of past assignments and tests. In the last few years, it goes as in the article: someone makes a group chat, though if they have an ounce of sense they won't post a link to it in a chat the professor is monitoring, at least if they intend to cheat through it. Invites spread organically from student to student or from DNS-like "hub" chats where people can ask for invites to any class's group chat. It would be really bad for cheaters if professors were on the "hub", able to join every class's group chat, so invites to the "hub" are guarded more zealously. Obviously they'd never be shared in a Zoom chat or other official platform, so online students (most of them, in 2020 and 2021) are left out. Offline, less socially connected people are less likely to get invited. Personally, even putting morals aside, I would not have been able to cheat if I wanted in the past few years. Cheating was everywhere, but I was anxious enough as it is actually doing the work; the added anxiety of cheating and maybe getting caught (especially in such a dramatic way as in this post!) would have been untenable. Maybe I should demand exam answer keys as a Section 504 accomodation...