Essay cheating at universities an 'open secret'

Always has been. At least for several decades. Unrealistic workloads and arbitrary word/page length requirements all but force students to cheat, or at best master the art of "BSing" papers, becoming a human slop machine. Which may be a useful skill for a career in academia that benefits oneself but does absolutely nothing to advance human knowledge. Comparable to leetcode in some ways. What we have now is similar to the "eight-legged essay" from feudal China which began as meritocracy and became a ridiculous, corruptible formality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay

On one hand, I think the students are just wasting their money and time learning no-skills by purchasing essays. After all many courses do need reading and writing essays.

On the other hand, I think the students are wasting their money and time being forced to take many courses in universities, anyway. Back in the university an undergraduate usually takes 90-120 which represents 30-40 courses to get a degree, which is a total BS.

So yeah, whatever.