[briancarper]

People cheat because they're immoral when no one's looking. I don't see that we need to try to justify it any further than that. Someone can get something valuable without working for it by lying/stealing, and they can probably get away with it, so they do it.

Sure, academic institutions reward cheating. What institution doesn't? Shoplifting has lots of rewards too. There are rewards to cheating at almost everything. The only things keeping people from doing it are conscience and integrity, and it's not news that many people (intelligent or not) have small supplies of both.

Cheating was rampant in my "honors" classes in high school and all through college as well, and more novel forms of cheating appear to be no less rampant in the business world. It bothers me, but I don't think we need to hunt for justifications for it. It seems easy to understand from where I'm sitting. Just be thankful we don't all have Rings of Gyges.