If a student doesn't complete an assignment, she can't learn the material. For example, if the student purchases an example of a proposal from a paper mill, she won't learn how to write a proposal. When she enters the workplace as a nonprofit coordinator and she is asked to write a grant proposal, she will not have the basic understanding of the proposal. In this instance, plagiarism makes her degree less valuable to her and to her employer.
Many educators feel frustrated because the constant vigilance against plagiarism takes time away from instruction. Instructors must cover the appropriate citing of sources each semester to ensure that all of the students understand citation, because if they do not cover citation basics, students will plagiarize and claim they didn't know they were doing something wrong. Educators also must take time out of their day to spend time on plagiarism database programs checking student work. All of this limits the time the instructor can spend actually helping students with their writing.
Academic programs suffer when students graduate without the skills that the educators work to incorporate. At all levels of instruction, educators and administrators spend hours aligning their curriculum with state and national objectives. When students cannot demonstrate that they meet these expectations on standardized tests in high school or during portfolio evaluation at the university level, educators spend more time re-evaluating assignments and objectives. Further, the programs look weak to future employers or other schools when their graduates are unable to meet the minimum standards.
Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are highly correlated. A student who cheats on a paper is likely to cheat on a test. This ends-justifies-the-means mentality can spread to other areas in life. An accountant who cheated in college is more likely to cheat clients or to help clients evade their taxes. The role of the school is not only to instruct students about academic subjects, it is to teach planning and preparing for tasks and doing them the correct way.