Well as I recall, in almost all of the Varsity Blues cases, the bribes were taken by rogue employees, unbeknownst to their employers the schools, to line their own personal pockets*. Why would/should that deter anyone from still wanting to go to Yale or Georgetown and get the fabulous educations offered there? I don’t remember any of the schools having more than 1 coach/bad apple who was part of Varsity Blues scandal, it seems absurd to me to blame the school for these ethical lapses in isolated individuals (ha ha unless maybe they should be paying their coaches larger salaries to discourage them seeking illicit supplemental income?? I do not think most college coaches make very much money outside of the big football/basketball etc situations). As for no requirement to give the money back, the schools themselves didn’t take the money, so there’s no money for them to give back. In fact, the schools were victims. For example, in the cases where recruiting spots were given up to non-athletes, presumably their tennis/soccer/whatever team wasn’t as good as it should have been, and they may have lost out on championship opportunities, (in addition to the harm to reputation from being associated with the scandal without actually participating in it) etc.
I see the Georgetown coach just agreed to a plea deal, that will involve between 1-4 years of jail time, and forfeiture of $3.4 million, just more than the $3 million he amassed over 11 years from his participation. He took on average 1 player per year as part of the Varsity Blues. I believe this was the most egregious situation involving the most money. So as awful and shameful as Varsity Blues was, it was a very fringe, small population of people involved.
*I do remember the exception of the Stanford sailing coach, who also did it without the knowledge of Stanford, but I think he put the money towards the sailing program, which really would indirectly him anyway if he ends up with a stronger program due to the investment, his job more secure with a successful program…