> They find ways to cover up the fact that nobody is learning to code properly

Aha, so the secret summary is that:

Both students and teachers want the students to succeed,

so they cheat together, to make that (seem to) happen

> A few of the tricks they used

Thanks for writing about that, really interesting to read (!)

> cheating was rampant

(You don't happen to know about some websites being used for that? I recently found out about studypool dot com.)