The college admissions bribery scandal has rightfully provoked outrage at the lengths to which wealthy parents will go to secure spots in elite institutions for their children — and the extent to which those institutions are happy to play along. The thirty-three parents indicted for taking part in a scheme to cheat, bribe, and Photoshop their kids’ way into competitive colleges like the University of Southern California and Yale are celebrities, finance executives, CEOs, and venture capitalists — rich enough, in other words, to pay hundreds of thousands to inflate SAT scores and persuade coaches to falsely designate their sons and daughters as athletes, but not enough to bribe colleges the traditional way: putting their name on a building or citing a “legacy” of generations of attendees.

On the heels of the indictment came a series of stories exposing how deep the inequities in higher education go, including the finding that low-income students, should they somehow make it to an elite school, could very well end up cleaning their richer peers’ toilets to make ends meet.

Not only are the rich buying their kids admission to elite schools. Those elite schools are then practicing rampant grade inflation — to maintain the ruse, one might assume, that their attendees are exceptional for reasons other than their families’ wealth. Upon graduation, these same students are fast-tracked to positions at high-paying firms.