I have to agree with you on the piece of paper. It always confused me when friends would take easier university courses to keep their GPA higher when they could

I have to agree with you on the piece of paper. It always confused me when friends would take easier university courses to keep their GPA higher when they could take a harder one and learn more. In the real world, people don't care about your GPA, or the piece of paper really. They care about your competency. I think you're right in that software is a field where it's hard to fake it 'til you make it. Not sure how it is in the US, but where I live it's typically students in business, accounting, marketing, and management that do the majority of the cheating. Whether that's because how those subjects are assessed makes them inherently more suitable for cheating or because language problems make essays, but not software, harder to write is difficult to say.