I agree, I'm not against cheating but high risk high reward. If you're dumb enough to include the lecturer in the very group chat you cheat in then you deserve to fail. The class was stupid to even think they could cheat as a whole class, its like robbing a liquor store with 80 accomplices. What you do is you find a small group of individuals you trust and you cheat together secretly and given how small that group is likely to be you're all forced to learn something.
For the amount of money most universities cost, it would be stupid and irresponsible not to cheat and risk failing a class. Struggling and failing legitimately has no upsides and only downsides, big financial downsides, along with possibly a delayed or no graduation if it cuts their funding.
I would agree with your position if college was either extremely cheap or free. But as a money making endeavor it serves more as a roadblock to prosperity or in numerous other cases a potential pit of debt.
Ah but there's still a huge inefficiency here! Why bother with the offer? Just let them include their four years of tuition to $65 application fee and make the rest of the application optional. You wouldn't want them to waste all that time writing bullshit essays about their passion for their major if they're not going to study it anyways :)
Supporting a "benign neglect" model of cheating is how you get a very expensive degree mill. The perception of others that your institution is a degree mill both degrades the value of those who already graduated with a degree from there and it devalues the research put out by the staff ("oh, look at this paper that came out of that sham university down the road").
