Sixteen elite universities, including Yale, Brown, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are named in a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The lawsuit claims the named schools violated antitrust regulations by colluding to reduce institutional financial aid packages to students.
The lawsuit was filed by five former undergraduate students of three schools named in the suit. Former students Sia Henry (Duke), Michael Maerlander (Vanderbilt), Brandon Piyevsky (Northwestern), Kara Saffrin (Northwestern), and Brittany Tatiana Weaver (Vanderbilt) all attended their schools with the help of need-based financial aid. They claim in their lawsuit that all of their institutions currently belong or recently belonged to a member organization called the 568 Presidents Group, an association of universities founded in 1998 that the plaintiffs argue "has explicitly aimed to reduce or eliminate price competition among its members. As a result of this conspiracy, the net price of attendance for financial-aid recipients at Defendants' schools has been artificially inflated."
Lawsuit From Former Students Alleges Financial Aid Price Fixing at Elite Universities (reason.com)
The lawsuit was filed by five former undergraduate students of three schools named in the suit. Former students Sia Henry (Duke), Michael Maerlander (Vanderbilt), Brandon Piyevsky (Northwestern), Kara Saffrin (Northwestern), and Brittany Tatiana Weaver (Vanderbilt) all attended their schools with the help of need-based financial aid. They claim in their lawsuit that all of their institutions currently belong or recently belonged to a member organization called the 568 Presidents Group, an association of universities founded in 1998 that the plaintiffs argue "has explicitly aimed to reduce or eliminate price competition among its members. As a result of this conspiracy, the net price of attendance for financial-aid recipients at Defendants' schools has been artificially inflated."
Lawsuit From Former Students Alleges Financial Aid Price Fixing at Elite Universities (reason.com)
