RMT is bad for games, that's why people dislike it. As soon as RMT enters into any game it changes and destroys the game. I've seen it happen countless times and never once have I seen any game where adding RMT improved it. It may help individuals like the college guy you mentioned, but it still harms the overall community to provide that benefit to one person.
Personally I don't really have much of a problem with a person randomly selling something for RMT once or twice a year, like an account. Although I still think it's bad, it doesn't harm much because they are isolated incidents.
What I do have a large problem with is when people make RMT their actual profession and sell hundreds of things for real cash, manipulating, lying, cheating and screwing people over just for a little extra profit any way they can get it. At that point they are no longer a player, they are a parasite leeching every cent they can from the game at the expense of other players and the general well being of the game. As I said I've seen this many times, and not just in UO. When the game finally collapses because of the greed-driven culture, the parasites simply move onto the next game to do it all over again, while the actual players who enjoyed the dead game have lost what they enjoyed, solely because greed entered into the equation and turned it from a game into a personal piggy bank for a handful of people.