I don't think that's the lesson. What I take from that is that people adapt to norms and incentives they have.

Despite all the talk about "academic integrity" and whatnot, very rarely were there punishments for people who cheated. For every professor that wrote FRAUD in the grade sheet and escalated to the Disciplinary Committee, there were 100 that turned a blind eye or at most confiscated a paper being passed around when the exam was being administered. This hypocrisy irked me much more than the cheating itself, in which I didn't partake mostly because 1) I thought it was kind of beneath me, something only mediocre students did (which I came to realize was not really true) and 2) I didn't care that much about the grade.

"Academic integrity"

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...

Probably because most of those professors had themselves cheated or plagiarized work when they were students.