My personal take, we’ve made the cost of failure to high and cheating too easy.
As a student, the only thing the next institution will see is GPA, school, major. Roughly in that order. If the cost of not getting an A is exclusion from future opportunities- then students will reject exclusion by taking easier classes or cheating.
As someone who studied physics and came out with a 2.7 GPA due to studying what I wanted (the hard classes) and not cheating (as I did what I wanted) - I can say that there are consequences to this approach.
In my opinion, the solution is to reduce the reliance on assessments which are prone to cheating or which in the real world would be done by computer.
As a student, the only thing the next institution will see is GPA, school, major. Roughly in that order. If the cost of not getting an A is exclusion from future opportunities- then students will reject exclusion by taking easier classes or cheating.
As someone who studied physics and came out with a 2.7 GPA due to studying what I wanted (the hard classes) and not cheating (as I did what I wanted) - I can say that there are consequences to this approach.
In my opinion, the solution is to reduce the reliance on assessments which are prone to cheating or which in the real world would be done by computer.