A few brief thoughts on this:
I don't think this somehow proves that higher education admissions is corrupt (or at least not more so than previously thought). To the contrary, it's not an accident these people got caught. A large-scale fraud/cheating conspiracy involving dozens of people is highly likely to be discovered, since one of them will almost certainly make a mistake or otherwise spill the beans.
The sports aspect of this is further evidence (albeit only incremental) that colleges should not be involved in big-time sports and should not have athletic preferences in admissions. Big-time sports is in conflict with the primary academic/research mission of universities.
While much of the indignation here is warranted, it's important to remember that what happened in most of these cases is that these people got their kids into schools one or two rungs above where they would otherwise be (e.g. - Yale vs. Brandeis, USC vs. UC San Diego, or the like). Social science research indicates that going to a slightly more selective university adds very little to your career prospects, after controlling for grades, test scores, and other standard variables.
"Full House" star Lori Loughlin and her husband apparently paid $500,000 to get their two daughters into USC as fake "recruits" for the crew team. They could have helped their kids far more by letting them attend a less selective university and then just giving them the $250,000 each as a nest egg for their careers. And this latter strategy carries no risk of prison time!
As a practical matter, legacy and sports preferences (and race- based affirmative action) get far more underqualified students into selective schools than hamfisted attempts at outright bribery and fraud. Some schools also have extensive admissions preferences for men over women (in order to keep from having what they consider too low a male-female ratio). These issues deserve far more attention than the present case, notwithstanding the involvement of various celebrities.