Well, morality isn't an objectively-verifiable property of the physical universe but one about which different opinions exist and where even if a “correct” answer exists it isn't demonstrably so, and in that sense nothing is morally wrong in a fully general sense, and moral values are very much shaped by socialization, sure.
OTOH, academic cheating involves violation of agreements and obtaining things of value by false representations, which is fairly broadly considered to be morally wrong generally, not just in the specific case of academic cheating.
> But there's really no equivalent of "cheating" in real world industries where it's the results that matter.
Pretty much the entirety of the law is about defining the what is cheating in seeking “real world” results, in the same way as academic codes define what is cheating in academic contexts.
Particularly, delegating assignments to third parties outside the scope of authorization by those giving the assignment, or using materials prohibited by those giving the assignment when completing it, is cheating in the real world, and not just the academy. (The reasons assignments have those kind of restrictions may be different, of course.)
You cheat on your test and become a lawyer, I may end up in jail because of your cheating.
... Or, you become a teacher, and my education is harmed.
... Or, an activity worker, and I fall off a climbing wall.
... Or, a scientist, and I waste time and resources repeating an experiment because you didn't understand what you were doing and lied to cover it up.
... Or, become a shop worker and I get short changed.
... Or, make sandwiches, and kill people because you don't follow basic hygiene and cheated to get your certificate.
... Or, a million other possible scenarios where people trust you to represent yourself so they know whether you're capable of carrying out the tasks you're set.
Or if you generalized cheating from "copying answers" to "producing answers that look right to your employers", you get a whole range of dishonest behavior you can get away with for years (careers?) while causing serious harm to individuals, companies and communities. Using unsafe materials which superficially pass inspection, outright faking studies so that it looks like your drugs work, fingering a likely suspect in a criminal investigation and lying on the stand to get them convicted.
I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but there is sometimes a logical appeal.
* It taught me how to learn difficult things quickly.
* The parts I do use were drilled to being second nature by the advanced courses I don't use anymore
Real Equivalent cheating:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693
The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.
He reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his jo
Here's the real problem: leaking private info:
> And it had then called on Verizon to look into what it had suspected had been malware used to route confidential information from the company to China.
> "Central to the investigation was the employee himself, the person whose credentials had been used to initiate and maintain a VPN connection from China," said Mr Valentine.
> Further investigation of the employee's computer had revealed hundreds of PDF documents of invoices from the Shenyang contractor, he added.
Same concept taken to its extremes.
Actual real world industries are full of possibilities for cheating: lie on your estimations, then lie to avert blame after those estimations are not met. Convert safety margings into profit margins and use that to outbid competitors who don't with prices they can't match. Real people die under collapsing structures that would not have collapsed had the safety margins been there.
They do if you are in violation of a license...
We only think it is because it's drilled into us from a young age by the educational system. But there's really no equivalent of "cheating" in real world industries where it's the results that matter. e.g. nobody cares if you took wrote the software yourself or got it from someone else's library, as long as the software product works.
If cheating happens, it is the responsibility of: 1) schools to deal with that accordingly (withhold degrees according to pre-written rules, etc) 2) employers to interview people instead of looking at credentials (something they should be doing anyway).