Top Major Schools Illegally Collude to Limit Student Financial Aid, Lawsuit Says
From the text of the complaint:> 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.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.Starting at page 26 (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.41...) 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.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.But there are other issues too, such as the use of need-aware policies for waitlisted applicants and the advantages given to "legacy" students.