[reeealloc]

I'm not a teacher, so maybe I should just stay out of it, but I'm of the opinion that teachers should try to help cheaters the same way they help failing students. Cheating is really just a proxy for failure, so why not just treat it the same as failing?

That being said, some kinds of cheating don't deserved to be punished. The given scenario is bad for the cheater, but some students put so much effort into writing notes to cheat with that they just end up doing the amount of effort required to pass.

[cgearhart]

Cheating is only rarely a proxy for failure. It has been my experience as a TA and instructor that cheating is more often considered an “accelerator” or “advantage” than an act of desperation. It’s not something that can be solved by academic support because the most brazen cheaters usually feel entitled to cheat—they view it as equivalent to doing the assigned work because it reaches the same end (a passing grade). For example, the student in the linked article admitted cheating, but had no contrition about it.

[getlawgdon]

No. Cheating is not a proxy for failure. They are in fact much more frequently inverse to one another. Cheating is intentional circumvention seeking reward. Failure is an outcome that comes more frequently from low effort, unethical effort, or honest effort with low capacity or skill.