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If the person with the spouse demanded "I want extra pay so my spouse can buy a private jet and fly to the nearest big city each week where they have a job", we might complain that it's overly expensive, but few people would call it nepotism; it's just a demand for a very high salary. Paying the employee by hiring the spouse for $X above market value is no different than just paying the employee $X. Yes, of course the university could have hired a better person instead of the spouse, but in the cash scenario, it could have hired a better person for some other position using the extra cash.
It's still subject to market forces. The person who is hired for $Y and demands that a spouse be hired at $X above market value (and thus is essentially demanding $X extra pay) still has to compete against other hires who are willing to be paid less than $Y+X. In the long run, the university isn't going to do this unless the hire is actually worth $Y+X.
If the employee had any influence over the hiring process other than "I won't take the job if you don't hire my spouse", that would be nepotism.
The comparison to affirmative action is bad because hiring someone based on ideology is not the same as hiring them based on value to the university (except insofar as the value is being created by non-market forces). If there were no non-market forces demanding affirmative action and if the affirmative action was an official policy of the university, then it would be comparable, but affirmative action wouldn't be sustainable under those circumstances.
Yeah, but it's all fake anyway. The correct way to deal with academia's fakery is to end the student loan program. The rest is just window dressing. This is like, the least offensive thing about academia. In fact it's somewhat endearing.
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The university could say "We can hire your spouse, but only at a salary that is what your spouse is actually worth", but then pay the employee a higher salary, which goes into the same household budget that it would if the spouse was paid a higher salary instead. That would be equivalent, but because the origin of the cash is being shuffled around, that would suddenly become acceptable by your standard.
I'm skeptical about a standard that depends on an accounting trick.
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