Yeah, they would blow the curve. Most university require professors to have a certain average GPA for a given class. If all of the cheaters pass with flying colors due to cheating, then the people who would have looked good otherwise, now seem average and get a C instead of the A they deserve.

Cheaters, whether American or Indian or Chinese, ruin the educational experience of college. Universities really should take it much more serious than they currently do.

It undermines the moral fabric of the society. It's not a coincidence that in India (or Bangladesh, where My family is from), you have to bribe someone to get your phone hooked up.

Ok, but I still am not clear about how this would affect the GPA of students who don't cheat.

Either because it is graded on a curve or because graduates are judged based on GPA. If you earned a fair and square 3.5 and a bunch of people cheated their way to a 3.7 you have a devalued 3.5.

It is cheating. The rules are quite clear, and these groups break those rules in a way that gives them an immediate and direct advantage over students who don't break the rules. The rules themselves may be subject to debate, but that these people engage in cheating really isn't.

They don't blow any curves necessarily but they do appear to be smarter or more able, and that impacts everything from teaching assignments to thesis committee solicitation.

In the case of Microsoft Exams (at least when I took them a few years ago), I had the sense that there was an "arms race". Questions were made more difficult and obscure than they needed to be, in order to drive pass rates down...when the real issue was braindumps and more blatant forms of cheating in some parts of the world. Which creates more demand for braindumps.

I wouldn't be surprised if college instructors start doing this as well-make exams tougher to compensate for cheating, rather than dealing with cheating head-on.