> It’s just that the money went to a third party instead of the college in the scandalous cases.
That's a pretty huge difference. Letting someone donate money in exchange for admission smells bad, but if the donation is larger than the cost, they made more room for others than they occupied themselves. If a third party captures the "donation", that's just a roundabout form of theft/embezzlement.
I don't know of any people who say that the US is entirely a meritocracy. I have heard the argument that success in the US is _more_ based on merit than it is in certain other places, or that basing success on merit is good and is something we should strive to do more than we currently do, but "it is possible to get ahead in ways other than merit" does not disprove either of those.
That's a pretty huge difference. Letting someone donate money in exchange for admission smells bad, but if the donation is larger than the cost, they made more room for others than they occupied themselves. If a third party captures the "donation", that's just a roundabout form of theft/embezzlement.