I think it's pretty obvious that a textbook that gets checked out a lot has a better claim to value than a textbook which is checked out seldom or never. Maybe

I think it's pretty obvious that a textbook that gets checked out a lot has a better claim to value than a textbook which is checked out seldom or never. Maybe there is some topic that is really useful to know. I bet a good book on this topic, that teaches it well, is checked out more often than a book on some useless subject or one that teaches poorly. Similarly, there are lectures on YouTube on valuable topics with tons of views and lecturers with lots of subscribers. If your content was available and accessible to large numbers of people would lots of people access it? If so, then your content is valuable, and if not... Bryan Caplan's book, The Case Against Education, discusses defenses of education along the lines you present here. For example, he goes over surveys of college students to see what information they retained after graduating, and finds they retained almost nothing. Maybe learning and studying is good for your brain and will enhance your ability to learn and study. But, this is an argument to learn and study, not to attend or try hard in college where learning and studying are very much optional. This post is a great example. 70% of the OP's students were in this one particular cheating group. How many were cheating in other ways? Why are the majority of the students cheating? After all, aren't they only cheating themselves? Are they are irrational? Or, maybe, they are there for the credential which is the vast majority of what you get from college.