Top Major Schools Illegally Collude to Limit Student Financial Aid, Lawsuit Says
From the text of the complaint:<p>> The 568 Exemption allowed the [colleges in question] to eliminate incentives to compete if all of the members admitted all students on a need-blind basis. Plaintiffs show herein, however, that by their own actions, Defendants did not satisfy this provision and thus were not entitled to the exemption.<p>This seems to be the heart of the complaint. The admissions process wasn't actually need-blind, so the colleges don't have an exemption from laws against price-fixing.<p>Starting at page 26 (<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.411049/gov.uscourts.ilnd.411049.1.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.41...</a>) they list a number of ways that colleges, despite claiming to be need-blind, actually do take financial need into account in admissions decisions. That's the real reason this scheme is illegal.<p>One (small) part of the reason they aren't need-blind turns out to be that they decide where and how to recruit students using sophisticated models that try to predict the resulting demand for financial aid (see pp. 29-32). Essentially, they are able to use data to shape their applicant pool based on financial need, while still technically being "need-blind" when reviewing the applications that come in.<p>But there are other issues too, such as the use of need-aware policies for waitlisted applicants and the advantages given to "legacy" students.