It's all about access - donate money, get your children into a place where they can have access to political and professional networks. That's the University of Southern California admissions scandal.

More money gets you a voice in hiring committees where you can set the tone of the department and shape political discourse. The Koch brothers (those people again) did that very successfully with George Mason University when they transformed what was a commuter college into a megaphone for libertarian ideas.

> It's all about access - donate money, get your children into a place

There is also a flip side to this coin, which is why universities usually call this the “development” office.

If you are going to give money away, you are very likely to give it to an organization to which you have some sort of affinity to. Universities are actively trying to cultivate that affinity so they can capture some or all of your charitable spending. And they really, really don’t want any donor to know how much they’ve been manipulated. Many people really believe that their child earned their admission letter based on merit.

Used to work in a university, pretty close to the data. The Alumni & Donations people played things very close to the chest, to the point of near irrational paranoia (wait, you want us to give alumni access to this stuff but ... not let us know who the alumni are?), so I think the fight for this kind of information is going to be quite intense.

The charitable read is that large donations and perennial benefactors are good for the school, and admissions considers the welfare of the school in addition to other factors.