Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities in the United States are facing a federal lawsuit alleging a violation of antitrust laws by sharing a formula used to determine financial need that limited aid for students while favoring wealthy applicants' admission.
The lawsuit was filed late on Sunday by five former students who attended three of the 16 schools named in the proposed class-action suit.
The other schools in the lawsuit besides Yale and Georgetown are: 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.
"The suit alleges that at least nine of the schools considered potential students’ ability to pay tuition in some admissions and waiting list decisions, which is prohibited for universities claiming the antitrust exemption," according to Forbes.
The antitrust exemption allows schools to work together to determine student financial aid formulas as long as the schools continue to admit students on a need-blind basis.
Lawyers told the Wall Street Journal that more than 170,000 students who used financial aid to attended these schools over the past 18 years could be eligible to join the lawsuits as plaintiffs.
"The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, and for the schools to stop working together to determine financial need," according to Forbes.
All 16 of the universities being sued are part of the 568 Presidents Group, an alliance of schools that maintain a common financial aid system.
Former federal prosecutor Eric Rosen, now a partner at Roche Freedman, is representing the plaintiffs, and recently helped convict the parents involved in the Varsity Blues case. Actors Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman both served time in prison for their roles in the scandal where wealthy families committed fraud to get their children admitted into top universities.
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