why?
admissions are rigged in many different ways.
First of all, these parents, involved in this college mess committed fraud. They ALL paid someone vast sums of money to do one or several of the following to get their kids into mainly USC: 1) have someone take the standardized tests for their child/children 2) had someone changing the answers that the student wrote down 3) had a proctor change the answers 4)lied about the sports that the student had been involved in 5) paid a bribe to the sport/s coach to claim that the student was needed on the team 6) bought a house of a coach or prof or was in charge of admissions at triple the price.
Do many colleges "rig" admissions in favor of certain groups and against others? Yes, they do and have done just that for well over 100 years. Is it "fair"? NOTHING IS "FAIR" IN LIFE!
This "rigging" was instituted almost 200 years ago ( possibly longer ) for "legacies" and those who went to elite private boarding schools, known as "feeder schools". The latter case being not as "bad" as you think, because those prep schools have always been superior to public and parochial schools, so that those students were far more prepared to do college level work. This is no longer necessarily so, but to some extent it still is.
At one time, really not all THAT long ago, there were "quotas" used to keep out Catholics and Jews from such places as Yale, Harvard, etc.! Now Asians have been added to that list.
On the flip side of that coin, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION was added, so that a lot of unqualified kids were favored due to their race, ethnicity ( the phony "HISPANIC" category ) which favored these groups above others, And now being poor, living in "da hood", and worse have been thrown into that mix.
And while "student athletes" ( no matter the race, grades, etc. ) were favored, by some schools, previously, that developed into a business decission in recent times.
The parents who donated vast sums of money and/or buildings, usually fell/fall into the "legacy" group, so that really isn't a separate category and yes, it is legal.
What the parents, who are now being prosecuted, are criminally guilty of, re this and other cases, IS criminal; it is FRAUD. Which is nothing at all even remotely akin to what private colleges do, vis-a-vis, "fair" or not, re admissions.
If you are still confused, I'll be happy to break it down, even further for you.