Five elite universities pay $104.5 million to settle price-fixing suit

Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Five elite U.S. universities agreed to pay a total of $104.5 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of price-fixing.

Duke and Columbia universities each agreed to pay $24 million, Yale and Emory will pay $18.5 million each and Brown University agreed to pay $19.5 million, according to court filings on Tuesday.

The suit, filed in January 2022, named schools that belonged to the 568 Presidents Group alleging 17 elite universities colluded as "a price-fixing cartel" to fix the size of financial aid practices.

"In collectively sharing confidential data and information about admissions and financial aid, adopting this methodology, and regularly meeting to implement this methodology jointly, the 568 cartel has intended to reduce or eliminate, and in fact succeeded in reducing or eliminating, price competition among its members," it said.

"It is past time for the presidents and governing bodies of the remaining defendants to stand up and do the right thing for their students and alumni, and resolve the overcharges to middle class and working class students that stemmed from the twenty years of collusion on financial aid by elite universities," said Robert D. Gilbert, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a Wednesday statement to the Boston Globe.

The suit added that the burden of the universities' overcharges affected more than 200,000 students who were overcharged for more than 20 years and "falls especially on low-and middle-income families struggling to afford the cost of a university education and to achieve success for their children."

"Defendants have given preference to wealthy applicants through the largely secretive process known as 'enrollment management,'" it read.

The universities that settled Tuesday did not admit any wrongdoing in the case.

"This settlement contains no admission that Yale did anything wrong but allows the university to avoid the cost and disruption of further litigation and to continue its work in making undergraduate education more affordable for more families," a Yale spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Brown spokesman Brian E. Clark declared that the university "vehemently" believes the claims in the lawsuit were meritless.

"But given he time and financial resources required o take this case to trial, we determined that our resources are better spent resolving this matter and supporting the education of our students," he said.

The University of Chicago previously agreed to settle the suit for $13.5 million and Vanderbilt has also reached a settlement agreement, according to Ted Normand, another lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The university defendants in the lawsuit are: Brown, California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Northwestern, University of Notre Dame Du Lac, University of Pennsylvania, William Marsh Rice University, Vanderbilt, and Yale.

In a July 2022 filing in the case, Justice Department said the universities were not immune from antitrust laws under the 568 exemption because at least some of the universities "do not admit all students on a need-blind basis."