How can we prevent plagiarism at university level?

Threaten to give them a photo copied degree.

There are tons of tools to fight this. No clue how you would prevent people from trying. I have Alta-Vistaed a few papers. I am that old.

What’s with the obsession over plagiarism?

Who is “we”? This isn’t my battle. It might be yours.

Remember that copy/paste is how a lot of work gets done in the corporate world. Might it be the case that “copiers” in university are simply using skills that they will need after graduation?

One of the schools where I worked used a program called TurnItIn.com
Students submit their work through that website and it is supposed to be good at catching plagiarizing.