Yale is an elite, private institution, with a 40+ billion endowment. 40m is pocket change, relatively speaking. Most ivy league schools, have hardly anything to do with the problem of America's broken higher education in general. These elite schools have decades, and in some cases centuries, old legacy wealth. Being elite means they are highly selective, and if you are from someone with low or middle income that does indeed get selected to go there, chances are you are getting financial assistance from the endowment fund.

If this happened at a public institution, especially one part of a state system, it would be a much bigger scandal. While this is indeed scandalous, this is like crying over some rich people's pocket change, and not something that can be used as ammo against American universities on the aggregate. Again I am agreeing with your premise, American higher education on the whole is rife with waste, schemes, and scandals, but at least Yale and Harvard aren't vacuuming Stafford loans like Cal, Suny, or UOP.