A federal complaint has been filed against Yale and more than a dozen other prestigious colleges, alleging that they broke antitrust rules by sharing a methodology for calculating financial need that limited aid while favouring wealthier applicants.
On behalf of five former students who attended three of the institutions cited in the proposed class-action lawsuit, the lawsuit was filed late Sunday.
The colleges reportedly participated in price fixing by utilising a common technique to identify students’ financial need, limiting help and prohibiting competition to provide more generous aid packages, according to the lawsuit.
According to the petition, colleges are allowed to collaborate on developing assistance formulas under an antitrust exemption for schools as long as students are enrolled on a need-blind basis.
The action claims, however, that at least nine of the institutions took into account potential students’ capacity to pay tuition in some admissions and waiting list decisions, which is illegal for colleges claiming the antitrust exemption.
The complaint demands monetary damages as well as an end to the colleges’ collaboration in determining financial necessity.
According to the Wall Street Journal, upwards of 170,000 students who attended the institutions utilising financial assistance over the last 18 years may be entitled to join the action as plaintiffs.
Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, and Vanderbilt University are among the universities named in the lawsuit.
