As someone who “cheated” - it was a requirement to pass classes. “Professors” (researchers and post-docs who hated lecturing) were in a constant arms race against the students. We were assigned problems routinely that we would ask the professor to solve in class - they could not do it. They would fail it themselves. This happened in multiple subjects.
Many classes also had students not showing up if it was clear that they were not going to need to be in class to know the subject material. If you could read it from the book and the professor was straight forward with their testing - students wouldn’t show. It was a waste of time to go to the lectures because often these professors were absolutely terrible. You were just better off reading the book because you’d be less confused by that.
Tbh - college is a giant scam in the way many people think of it as a way of “learning”. For myself and many of my peers - it was purely a transactional procedure. We needed the credentials and we needed good grades in those credentials. Everything else was secondary.
Optimizing for “learning” is such a joke in our capitalistic winner takes all economy. Give me a break. I’m not a Rothschild ffs.