Plagiarism hurts the entire academic community because it questions the forms of intellectual ethics to which the community subscribes. It most immediately hurts your direct relations with your professors and fellow students.
Your professors expect your ideas in an assignment, not what you found on somebody else's website, because that is the only way to assess and foster your learning. Encountering plagiarism in a student paper takes a terrible toll on a professor's ability to trust the student and feel enthusiasm for teaching him or her.
Similarly, fellow students quite rightly feel cheated and frustrated when they discover a peer plagiarizing. If you plagiarize your paper for a course and receive a good grade, how fair is that to the student sitting next to you who worked hard on his/hers but received the same grade or even a lower grade? In some ways, you are stealing your grade while other students are working for theirs.
Students who write their own papers learn much more (the true value of an education). Nonetheless, grades function in our university as a quantifiable reward for good work. For this reason, your peers can easily feel cheated if you receive the same pay for no work.
