plagiarism was how the germans caught up on the industrial revolution. plagiarism is how china cought up to the western world. the strict argument on this is that ideas cannot be owned. no one owns an idea. ideas just float around and can be left aside or captured. that's how i think about it anyways.
There's a moral argument w/r/t the concept of stealing IP, but in the context of education there is arguably more damage being done.
If you steal a design for a jet turbine, you still have to learn how it works and you add that understanding to your personal/corporate skillset. Basically you have learned a secret.
If you have someone write your college essay for you, then you probably do so in order to avoid putting in the work to write the essay yourself. Basically, you have learned nothing.
I know there's nuance to both but I think your argument is overly-reductive.
