Headline Roundup • January 11th, 2022
College Graduates Claim Major Universities Use Unfair Financial Aid Practices
Summary from the AllSides News Team
On Sunday, five U.S. college graduates filed a lawsuit against 16 major U.S. universities, claiming the schools violated financial aid antitrust laws.
The schools mentioned include Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. The suit alleges that the universities shared an unfair practice for determining student financial aid awards and conducted price-fixing. The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status, saying the alleged collusion caused 170,000 financial aid recipients to be overcharged by hundreds of millions of dollars. Section 568 of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 allows institutions to collaborate on financial aid formulas, but only if they don't consider the student's financial need in admission decisions.
Outlets across the spectrum covered the news prominently.
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Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Sixteen major universities in the U.S. were served a lawsuit in the Illinois federal court system Sunday over an alleged violation of antitrust law related to financial aid.
The suit alleges the universities, including Yale, Duke, Georgetown and Cornell, used an unfair, shared practice for determining student financial aid awards, as well as conducted price-fixing that βartificially inflated the net price of attendance for students receiving financial aid.β
Section 568 of the Improving Americaβs Schools Act of 1994 allows schools to be exempt from antitrust laws that would otherwise prohibit...

REUTERS/Gabriella Borter
Five U.S. college graduates have sued 16 major U.S. universities including Yale, Columbia and the University of Chicago, accusing them of colluding to limit financial aid to undergraduate students in violation of antitrust laws.
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status, saying the collusion has limited price competition and caused 170,000 financial aid recipients to be overcharged hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades.
The 16 schools are members of the 568 Presidents Group, a consortium of colleges that discuss common financial aid principles.
"Elite, private universities like defendants are...

CNN Digital
Sixteen top US universities, including Duke, Vanderbilt and Northwestern, are being sued by five former students claiming those schools may be involved in antitrust violations in the way those institutions worked together in determining financial aid awards for students, according to the lawsuit filed in a US District Court in Illinois.
The complaint, which was filed Sunday, alleges that these private national universities have "participated in a price-fixing cartel that is designed to reduce or eliminate financial aid as a locus of competition, and that in fact has artificially inflated...
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