On the one hand, the rampant cheating really is destroying the value of getting a degree. On the other hand, though, students are often forced to take classes which provide little or no value to their academic enrichment or future life / career. I've known students who had great aptitude for their main set of courses, but have been held up because of these mandatory courses. For exammple, nursing students who were expected to pass fairly advanced math classes, but were unable to. This is a loss for all of us, as they would likely make good nurses. Can you blame them if they cheat on classes like this so that they can focus on the classes that really matter to them?