No one sees themselves as evil. I'm sure that "they" just differ in terms of what they consider ethical. If I may play the devil's advocate: Why is it more ethical to favor those born with ability than to favor those born with connections?
I don't have a quarrel with either form of discrimination, but I do have a problem with the dishonesty about how things actually work.
The point of meritocracy isn't that it's more fair or ethical, the point is that we give the most important (on the margin) jobs to the people most capable of doing said job. The fact that money, status, and power flow to the people doing important jobs is an incidental side effect.
Now universities aren't exactly jobs, but the point stands. Universities are supposed to educate people, so that those people can do stuff. Letting in people with connections and not ability means we are not making the best use of our limited educational resources. Note that this is an argument for affirmative action as advertised and an argument against affirmative action as practised.
The primary goal of most research universities is to conduct research. Educating people is not the goal, or is an auxiliary goal.
Related: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/...
> But there is one misimpression that people seem to have, that might as well be corrected before any hasty actions are taken: the purpose of Harvard is not to educate students. If anything, its primary purpose is to produce research and scholarly work. Nobody should be surprised that the gigantic endowment isn’t put to use in providing top-flight educational experiences for a much larger pool of students; it could be, for sure, but that’s not the goal. The endowment is there to help build new facilities, launch new research initiatives, and attract the best faculty. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s hard to get alumni donations when you don’t have any alumni, serious consideration would doubtless be given to cutting out students entirely. ...
> This is not a value judgment, nor is it a particular complaint about Harvard. It’s true of any top-ranked private research university, including Caltech. ...
So in this case, I personally would say it's more ethical to favor those born with ability rather than connections because it rewards the behavior you're ostensibly trying to instill (hard work, overcoming odds, etc.). But again, I'm not surprised by these sorts of admissions policies, and I think swinging the other way so radically that they self-destruct is probably more ill-advised than the status quo.
Because this is the land of opportunity. See for yourself how a privileged spoiled brat from Ivy league universities behaves in this country [0]