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So then this big company hires a programmer to write a tool to randomize entries over a week or a month or whatever, and our shadow scholar has 1 additional step when he finishes up.

Basically, this idea is DRM in another guise, and terrible for all the same reasons. If you don't trust the student that much, then simply abandon take-home work in general.

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Randomized entries would be obviously fake. To be a convincing fake, they have to make sure it doesn't conflict with the student's work schedule, class schedule, and so on. That means deciding when the student was supposed to have been writing the paper, which requires quite a bit more coordination and drives up the cost.

You're assuming that the student doesn't own a laptop (or at least doesn't bring it to lectures) and that TPTB know the student's work schedule.

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