I hope it goes without saying that if a prospective student wants to learn how to "meet deadlines and get results", he should go get a job, not go to college. Going to college and cheating is both a destructive (it takes away time, resources, and credibility from the students who are actually there to learn the topic) and inefficient way to learn those skills.
I don't think people cheat to learn skills. They cheat to get a credential that can be used to get them into a job. The credential differentiates them from the non-cheating or non-intelligent population. With it they can manipulate others into thinking they are worth more than they are.
Of course, at that point you might think they'd be out of their league but in many cases this won't be the case. There are a lot of jobs which require great degrees but only to get in...
Sure, but they want the paper, so students figure out the most efficient way to get the paper. The fix isn't to catch cheaters, but to stop valuing the damn paper so much.
Well, if it were that easy to come up with good assignments year-after-year that did a great job of aiding and testing the students' progress but weren't amenable to cheating, then we wouldn't have this problem.
