“The survey of more than 50,000 students, found 15.7% admitted to cheating since 2014 - up from an average of 3.5% over the last 40 years.”. How useful are those numbers? Why will liars be truthful for a survey? Even if liars are telling the truth how useful is that information. Liar paradox- even when the liar is telling the truth he is lying.
Moe's https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-paper-mill-owner-details-lucrative-academic-fraud-business-212740344.html
Here's a story about dissertation mills https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190722084402994
Maybe I'm naive, but I really question the ability to submit a fake dissertation. If your advisor has been at all involved in your research, he/she will wonder where this completed diss comes from. Then there's the dissertation proposal stage; how do you propose one you're not going to write? Of course, if the school is complicit in the charade....