I can see the motivation behind this sort of "grades over learning" behavior in business school, since it's the sort of place where the Degree is all that matte

I can see the motivation behind this sort of "grades over learning" behavior in business school, since it's the sort of place where the Degree is all that matters. For other disciplines though, where you're actually there to learn something, I just could never understand why you would do that. Why would you pay money to take classes, and then cheat on tests to avoid having to learn the material. Couldn't you achieve the same result by simply doing nothing? I graduated with an Engineering degree, and a terrible grade point average. I could still, however, 15 years on, sit the final exam in any of my core classes and pass it. Somehow I doubt that the students copying each other's homework assignments as a "time-management strategy" will be able to do the same thing.