To your point, college is a path to education for some and a signal for others (and, probably more accurately, some mixture of both). I think the issue is when both groups (those that cheat and those that do not) both get the same credential. That means the credential has lost its "signal value".

To someone who values college as almost exclusively for its educational value, maybe that doesn't matter. But to many, especially HR, the degree is valuable for its signaling capability and watering that down has real and lasting consequences.