not those who did actually do the work, and learnt.
The change ought to be that students are allowed to be failed, and this should be a form of punishment for those who "cheat".
As a comment upthread said, let them cheat on the take home as much as they want to, they're still going to fail the exam.
Depends on the country and educational system I suppose, but I do believe professors in many places get in trouble for failing too many students. It's right there in the phrasing.
If most students pass and some fail, that's fine. Revenue comes in, graduates are produced, the university is happy.
If most students fail, revenue goes down, less students might sign up, less graduate, the university is unhappy.
It's a tragedy of the commons situation, because some professors will be happy to pass the majority of students regardless of merit. Then the professors that don't become the problem, there's something wrong with them.
Likewise, if most universities are easy and some are really hard, they might not attract students. The US has this whole prestige thing going on, that I haven't seen all that much in other countries.
So if the students overall get dumber because they grow up over relying on tools, the correction mechanism is not that they have to work harder once the exam approaches. It's that the exam gets easier.
It's technically allowed on an individual basis, but the economics don't work for any institution to attempt to raise its bar.
If institutions X and Y grant credential Z, and X starts failing a third of its students, who would apply to go there?
This assumes, of course, an institution is actively trying to raise the academic bar of its student population. Most schools are emphatically not trying to do this and are focused more on just increasing enrollment, getting more tax dollars, and hiring more administrators.
This model won't work for subjects that rely on students writing reports. But yes, universities frequently accept that failure rates for some courses will be high, especially for engineering and the sciences.
In Italy university keeps getting easier because their funding is tied to not failing students.