For many, the college admissions scam of wealthy people allegedly paying bribes to get their kids into elite universities only confirmed what they already knew: Higher education is rigged to benefit wealthy, white students. But the scandal also laid bare the irony of people who complain affirmative action gives an unfair advantage to students of color in admissions, when in fact rich, white kids get the scales heavily tipped in their favor.

“This scandal is just the extreme, the illegal extreme, but it’s in a continuum with legacy admissions, with Jared Kushner, with all these other thumbs on the scale that wealthy kids get that are legal,” said Susan Dynarski, professor of economics, education and public policy at the University of Michigan.

“There’s a lot more kids at elite colleges because their parents are rich than because they’re brown or black,” she added.

Critics of affirmative action policies ― which allow institutions of higher education to account for an applicant’s race or ethnicity to a certain extent when considering admission ― claim that these give an unfair advantage to nonwhite students.

But experts HuffPost spoke to pointed to the many ways, not even reaching the illegal, that access to higher education is already structured to benefit wealthy, white students over others.

Sarah Hinger, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s racial justice program, pointed to “non-criminal ways that privilege shapes college admissions,” such as legacy admissions preferences, donations and athletic scholarships, as well as experiences long before college such as private tutors and test prep to get into elite K-12 schools.

“Societally, we’re accustomed to families seeking to advantage their children through these methods,” Hinger said. “And the ability to do so is a privilege that largely accrues to wealthier white families.”

Meanwhile, in response to the cheating scandal, many people of color on Twitter who went to elite schools spoke of how they were often unfairly scrutinized as supposedly being there because of affirmative action, while rich white students were not targeted for being there due to their wealth.

“I’ve been told when I got in Amherst [College] that I was an ‘affirmative action baby,’” said Anthony Jack, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “And at Harvard as a grad student and a faculty member, it’s used as an insult.”

Hinger pointed to the acceptance, or relative lack of criticism, for advantages of wealth and privilege compared with the frequent criticism of affirmative action programs.

“The irony is that affirmative action or race-conscious admissions programs are intended to mitigate the disparities that privilege creates, to even the playing field at least slightly,” she added.

“Who’s getting the thumb on the scale?” Dynarski said. “Largely it’s not low-income or brown or black kids, it’s wealthy kids. ... If you look around a college campus and you’re thinking about who got in because of a thumb on the scale, it’s the rich white legacy kids.”