The following text is for questions 23 to 26.

    Cheating is a bad habit that must be avoided by students. There are no benefits that students get by cheating. It only makes them lazy.

    Cheating has a few consequences in both short and long terms. In the short term, it means that the learning process, is useless. Maybe you will feel safe because you do not get caught by your teacher. 
Then you will feel amazing when you get good grades without studying. But it is not such a good method. Actually, you are wasting your time and your money trying to "learn " by cheating. If you get caught, you will be in trouble because you can be expelled from school or university. In addition, you will get a zero on your test and a bad reputation with the teachers and the other students. In the long term, you may graduate from school or university by cheating, but when you are asked to use your knowledge at work, you can not solve your problems, give ideas, or be useful in a meeting because you did not learn much at university.

    From the consequences above, it is obvious that cheating is a bad habit that has many disadvantages for students.

"... it is obvious that cheating is a bad habit ...." (Paragraph 3)
 

What does the underlined word mean?