I think I might not have conveyed my point here as well as I had hoped because it seems to have come across wrong. What I was trying to get at is not that we cheat as employees, but that perhaps the academic world should look more at how the real world works and promote collaboration and teamwork a lot more! That in the real world working with others will often get you much further than trying to do everything yourself.

Also, it’s my personal opinion that not everyone is skilled at teamwork. For some people it comes naturally, but for a lot of others it a learned skill. On a side note this is something that I personally found woefully inadequate in my academic life that luckily I managed to get on my own.

In any case, I wasn’t trying to say that people are cheating by working, but rather that academia is not right in considering collaboration and teamwork on assignments cheating.

Same as in the academic world. When I was in school, my job is to study, and thus I was not supposed to pay others to study for me. If I am to learn about designing software, I must design it myself, not to have others to do that for me.

So, the real world is no more cheating than the academic world.

Once you’re out of school, only results matter.

In that respect, you’re right you won’t claim you drew up the contract. But in another respect you will claim you bought the property, you did your due diligence, you found the great deal (was it your Realtor?), you made a profit from it, and so…

When was the last time you had a lawyer draw up a contract, then claim to have done it yourself?