You can ask students to submit the MATLAB or any other code for the assignment. You can automatically run them all and score their answers in pass/fail. I suspect that submitting code forces people to not send exactly the same thing over (you can even automatically check for that) but you keep the requirement functional: all you care about is code that runs and produces the right answers.
Is it unfair to ask students to hand write matlab code on exams/quals
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I was going to write this. I really hope this is at a terrible school and you aren’t imposing this nonsense too many students. Please stop.
Wtf is wrong with you, OP? This is classic LRM mentality. The point is to test students' ability to think algorithmically not to trip them with syntax.
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OP, we had the same problem at my HRM.
Our solution was to ask students on the comp to sketch an algorithm to solve something.
They didn't literally have to write commands, but just see if they can describe the general idea of say, value function iteration in general equilibrium.
You could see very clearly who had done the assignments. 30% of the class got 0 marks for that question.