Expected to recruit “blindly”, sixteen reputable universities, including Yale, the WITH or Columbia, are accused of collusion with the aim of capping the financial aid granted to disadvantaged students. While the admission requirements are increasingly criticized in the country, these establishments will have to explain themselves in federal court in Illinois.
Sixteen of the largest American universities have come together to cap financial aid for disadvantaged students. Among them, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (WITH), Yale or Columbia. A lawsuit was filed Jan. 9 in Illinois federal court in an antitrust class action lawsuit, reveal the Wall Street Journal.
These universities are accused of having jointly set a ceiling for financial aid, by sharing a method for calculating the payment capacities of applicants. However, federal law authorizes schools to collaborate on their formulas only if they practice admission in “blind”, that is to say without taking into account the financial resources of their candidates.
More than half of the universities targeted have nevertheless favored the admission of wealthy students, children of donors “Past or future” of the establishment, advance public radio website NPR, which evokes a “University cartel”.
170,000 students involved
The trial aims to put an end to this collusion and to obtain damages for the victims. According to lawyers, 170,000 former students who have received partial financial aid in recent years – the agreement of this group of universities, say “568 presidents”, date 1998 – could join the trial as plaintiffs.
At the origin of the complaint were representatives of former students and lawyer Eric Rosen, who participated in the 2019 trial of the Varsity Blues case, a college admissions fraud scandal.
According to the terms of the complaint cited by NPR, “Private and elitist universities” are “The watchdogs of the American dream”. The latter are known for the exorbitant amount of their registration fees, sometimes as high as $ 80,000 per year.
In addition to Yale, Columbia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (WITH), one counts among the implicated establishments Brown, Caltech, the University of Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice and Vanderbilt.
A Yale representative responded by saying her facility was in compliance with the law, while the WITH should “to respond [de ces accusations] before a court in good time ”.
the Wall Street Journal notices that this problem is growing:
The university admissions system, in force for several decades, is being strongly questioned and is starting to falter on its foundations. ”