I graduated in a country with a free university, and the students still cheated, but most failed. The teachers were more strict with much more challenging assignments and tests, plus a lot of teachers would allow open books, but the difficulty of the exams was out of this world.

Half the class would fail, and because of the difficulty, chances are, If you cheated, it was also wrong.

If the teacher caught you cheating, it was a big fat zero right away, and there would be a board of teachers to protect the decision.

And the University is free,even to re-enroll, you only need to pass the entrance exam, which was super easy for any course except for the doctor, law, or engineering. (CS is super easy to enter because they have more spots than students interested in it)

So I don't know; people will cheat rather than put in the hard work and learn.

I attended a cheap university (it's free if you're free enough) and I did it just in case I wanted to work somewhere where they required it. I managed to work a software develope job instead of attending lessons and find a way to pass exams (cramming, cheating, etc). Projects were the best part of the course as they resembled real work and not studying crap I mostly didn't care about.

Most people did it for getting a job.

In my experience, the free university was much harder than the expensive university.