You can argue that cheating puts you ahead of students that work in good faith, systemically, though it's still a bit different. Stealing has implied intent of taking something away from someone, cheating doesn't. You're just trying to get better grades.
Merit scholarships are given based on class rank. If the #11 student cheats to get to #10, then they took scholarship money that someone else actually earned. This is a very real problem in my school district.
Additionally, if you cheated to get good grades and got into a good university because of them, then you probably took the seat of someone that didn't cheat and was not accepted but would have been.
Also, (some?) universities internally rank high schools by the performance of the students they accept. So, if School A sends a bunch of 4.0 students that all flunk out, then future students from that school get their 4.0 weighted lower than a 4.0 from School B where students regularly graduate from the university with honors.
So, if you are cheating to get a good grade and you get into a good school (taking the seat of a student that didn't cheat) and then you get caught cheating, or just end up doing poorly because you were never that good of a student, then future students from your high school will be penalized because of the poor choices you made (and because the school was unwilling or unable to deal with those choices).
The system is. broken. to. begin. with. And not just with cheating, with a number of different factors.
What incentive, as a student, do I have to NOT cheat if I won't get caught?
We only think cheating is only "wrong" because it goes against how the people who set up the educational system intend for it to work, e.g. they are short circuiting the system. It has no counterpart in the real world, and cannot be compared to murder and theft. If it were up to me, I'd make the school system results-only -- i.e. it's about how well you can build a project and explain it, not how well you can write up answers.
People who think otherwise need to wake up from their K-12-university programming.
And in case anyone thinks I'm an uneducated redneck, I am an Asian American overachiever with two engineering degrees from world-renowned universities.
.. and as cheating isn't wrong in your personal ethical system you're happy to lose your job to someone who claims to be better qualified than you but is just cheating to get ahead?
I don't know what engineering you do but I don't think society should value engineers as highly who know something is wrong but can't explain it and so don't get it fixed. "Soft" skills matter.