At the university of Whatshisface, tuition is $10^12/semester, and everyone receives $(10^12-10^3)/semester in needs-based financial aid. I assure you that I have a karmatic license to do anything I want - after all, summed across all students I give more than the GDP of many small countries.

Right... From the stats from Yale linked above, the median net cost after financial aid is $12.5k. That's a lot less than I paid to go to a public university.

As for a "license to do anything", it's not clear what exactly you're complaining about here? They get some money through non-merit based admissions, sure, and then use the money to build nice things for students, and to help cover most students' tuitions. The point of this thread is that there's a difference between private schools accepting donations for this purpose, vs. corrupt individuals accepting bribes. The latter case benefits only the unmeritious student and the corrupt individual, and not the university has a whole.

I wonder how that compares, demographically, to the proportion of students receiving need-based financial aid and full-rides at my alma mater (an HBCU with a substantially smaller endowment).