5 elite universities to pay $104.5 million to settle price-fixing lawsuit
The lawsuit said the universities limited financial aid to certain students.
Several elite universities have collectively agreed to pay $104.5 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of weighing financial capabilities when deciding which applicants to accept or reject.
According to The New York Times, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory, and Yale were among universities exempt from federal antitrust laws when they disclosed formulas to gauge prospective students’ financial needs.
However, a court filing on Tuesday revealed that the universities disregarded a legal protection clause stating that their admissions procedure would be “need-blind,” meaning they could not consider whether a potential student was wealthy enough to pay.
Brown is settling for $19.5 million, while Emory and Yale will pay $18.5 million. Duke and Columbia have agreed to pay $24 million each. Separately from Tuesday’s filing, Rice University shared that it agreed to pay nearly $34 million.
The universities did not admit wrongdoing and resisted allegations that they hurt students with their approach.
The University of Chicago — which said the suit was “without merit” — previously agreed to pay $13.5 million to settle its case portion. Vanderbilt University in Nashville also told the court last year that it planned to settle.
Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., and the University of Pennsylvania are among the institutions still embroiled in the litigation with no trial date set.
The litigation targeted 17 schools that belonged to the 568 Presidents Group, named for the legal provision that offered antitrust protection. The lawsuit argued that institutions’ financial aid policies were unlawful because they had not adhered to the need-blind admissions requirement while considering candidates on wait lists.
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According to The Times, the 568 Group dissolved in 2022 as the antitrust protection expired.
Since the 568 Group reduced cost competition, the lawsuit claimed that the institutions overpaid by around 200,000 students, resulting in an “artificially inflated” net price of attendance.
The lawsuit accused the institutions of breaking the terms of their antitrust exemption by considering need in any context.
It also asserted that if institutions had fought harder for financial aid, students may have gotten more assistance and saved more money for education.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs stated in their filing on Tuesday that the settlements “were not achieved as a group or all at once, but instead were pursued separately over the course of time.”
The lawyers added that they had “pursued a strategy of increasing the settlement amounts with each successive agreement or set of agreements to exert pressure on non-settling defendants to reach agreement imminently or risk having to pay significantly more by waiting,” The Times reported.
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