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Harvard and dozens of other elite private universities were accused of violating federal antitrust law by collaborating on a financial aid strategy that eliminated competition and raised the cost of attendance for students in a federal class-action lawsuit filed Monday.
The suit was filed in the federal Northern District of Illinois against 40 private universities and the College Board, a nonprofit that administers the SAT and develops the CSS Profile, which is widely-used application for non-federal financial aid. Non-federal, or institutional, financial aid is often given by a college or university itself.
The lawsuit alleged that the universities broke antitrust law by requiring non-federal aid applicants to disclose financial information from noncustodial parents — a parent without custody of a minor, who normally does not live with them — through the CSS Profile. The suit claims that the College Board began an “intentional push” in 2006 for schools to agree to consider noncustodial parent income in financial aid calculations.
Universities inflated the cost of attendance by considering the income of a noncustodial parent regardless of their actual involvement in a student’s education, the suit alleged. The plaintiffs said the “average net price” among the defendant universities is $6,200 more than elite schools who do not consider a noncustodial parent’s income.
The defendants include every member of the Ivy League except Princeton, as well as Duke, Stanford, MIT, and dozens of other colleges and universities across the country. The suit was brought by a current Boston University student and a 2021 Cornell University graduate.
Every university named as a defendant uses the CSS Profile. Several, including Harvard, are also named for having a member of their admissions staff serve on a College Board-sponsored advisory council around issues of financial aid.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
A spokesperson for the College Board wrote in an email that the organization is “reviewing” the lawsuit but is “confident that we will prevail in this action.”
The new lawsuit is not the first antitrust case to be filed in recent years against prominent private universities nationwide.
Seventeen members of the 568 Presidents Group — a consortium of elite private universities practicing need-blind admissions that does not include Harvard — were sued in 2022 over allegations of illegal price-fixing and collaboration over financial aid packages awarded to students.
The group was ultimately dissolved later that year as a result of the suit and several member schools paid out multimillion dollar class-action settlements, though they denied wrongdoing.
Harvard and other Ivy League schools were also sued last year by two student-athletes at Brown, who alleged that the colleges colluded to suppress financial aid and compensation for athletes.
—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached matan.josephy@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.