This seems like an incomplete take. Part of the reason colleges want these kids is because their stats (GPA, test scores) help the college with their rankings.

Separately, I question how wealthy the families are that are contributing $60k/yr. They obviously have to have enough money to pay this much, but they may be largely bled dry by 4 years of tuition (per kid). This would be half a million dollars of post-tax money for two kids. That's a lot of money, but if it's half (or more) of your retirement savings, then it's not like you're not going to miss it.

One has to be truly wealthy ($5M+ of liquid assets) to not feel half a million dollars, and I assume if this was the type of family the writer was referring to, he would have indicated that these are truly wealthy people, not just someone who would be considered wealthy in Topeka or Duluth.

College has gotten so expensive that it's a big cost for pretty much every family. There have been many articles about how no one pays the rack rate anymore, so it's not really as expensive as it seems. The only way that could be true is if merit-based aid is in the mix.

NYT finally doing fraud investigations because Nick Shirley was right?

Meanwhile as a young man the financial aid system told me I was a dependent solely because I was under 24 (I paid my own bills, rent, worked and filed my taxes, and relied not at all on my parents, but hey) and that any aid would be calculated against the wealth of both myself and my family. My father isn’t exactly a wealthy man, but combining the wealth of late career man would have certainly made it seem like I was in some great economic position I was not.