> It is a cliche, but truly, they are only cheating themselves.

> Careers eventually filter out (most of) the cheaters.

Some yes. Some no. I cheated in my computer architecture class. I was already an accomplished programmer in Perl and Java, but cpu design was kicking my ass. It required a lot of time and effort, and I had little left over to give. I got the gist of most of the class, but I cheated a lot in order to pass. By doing so, I eked out a passing grade, satisfied that requirement, and got my diploma. And I have had a good career since then, needing absolutely nothing that I learned in that course. I also cheated a little in american history and poli sci.

I needed a diploma, and if I hadn't cheated, I wouldn't have gotten the diploma. And the fact that I understood less of those courses than my grade would suggest, has hurt me not one whit, so far in my fairly lengthy career.

Cheating in some courses is a self-defeating mistake. But your assumption that the only purpose of college is learning course material is a little naive. I got a LOT out of college, in terms of social experience, credentials, professional connections, etc. I did not cheat myself at all.

> they are only cheating themselves.

I disagree. They are undermining the value of the qualification other have earned.

> only the students who were committed to understanding the material went on to have superb careers

For STEM, sure. This guy is a psych professor though. I suspect that most of their jobs will have absolutely nothing to do with this class. Obviously being truly successful instead of cheating will help in their careers, but I doubt anything they learn in this class would.

> I have a concern for the future of our society when the majority of an entire generation seems committed to cheating, though.

The COVID pandemic makes me worried about this even more. It's gotten really bad, I can't imagine how bad it's going to get when the generations it affected reach college. Maybe I'm overestimating it (if you cheated through HS, you might not go to college), but there were already clear trends that are definitely going to be exacerbated.

if a good job pays 100-300k/year, does it matter if you eventually get filtered out if you already made good $ and keep expenses low.

I've always wondered about that lol. Surely there are people who do this? If you dedicate your life to becoming very good at interviewing and bullshitting, you can almost certainly get high paying jobs that you are entirely unqualified for and cannot perform even the basic duties of. Despite this, you should be able to anyways since getting fired from a large company for "gross incompetence" is a long process, especially when you're a new hire and they're liable to assume you're just adjusting to new tools. Pocket those 3-6 months of pay, keep interviewing, and just keep hopping jobs and finding new places to scam without ever actually doing anything useful at all.