The student is attending college to get a job. Most students don't care about the course.

Probably around 50% of students in my year were only in it for the well paying jobs a prestigious degree like that could give them.

This has to be part of the threat model for cheating.

I am in my final year of my bachelors in Software Engineering. I was (mostly still am) very interested in both SWE and CS in various angles - I studied a decent bit of PL theory, I tried to get into systems programming, I've built a bunch of "portfolio crud" software and had a short internship in a real company, with all of the above being roughly equally interesting to me. All this is to say I genuinely love the field so far.

However, the only benefit I've got from my local university is that it saves me from military while I study. Past year 2 (out of 4, country-specific quirks) there was roughly one subject actually worth paying attention to, so I also have switched to a "just get a decent grade at any cost" mode, as most of the material we're studying (and especially most of the assignments we've done) has negative value in real world.

Most of my peers consider me both more enthused and more knowledgeable than the average student, which mostly makes me realise that roughly 95% of my peers don't care about the contents of the courses.

All this is to say that, while grading is hard, the only thing that might get people to actually care is a proper course, no matter what threats you make.

It's pointless. Just an arms race of gimmicks. There's really no option besides making homework all optional, and putting 100% of the grade into in-person exams. I basically don't trust that any new graduate has earned their degree, and won't until schools do what's necessary to crush cheaters.