This should be considered tax fraud for the donors. The donations they made are charitable contributions, which they surely deducted from their income taxes. When you donate to charity you can only deduct the amount in excess of the benefit provided to you. For instance if you buy a $50 ticket to a charity dinner where they give you $50 of food and drinks, you can't deduct that at all.

So these people donated and then got admission to UC Berkeley in exchange. Surely that has some value! I don't know how you determine that figure, but it's >>$0