Yale, Columbia University and Several Other Elite Schools Accused of Working Together to Limit How Much Financial Aid is Given Out to Students

Several major universities and Ivy League schools in the country have been accused of coming together in a plot to limit how much financial aid is given to students.

Sixteen big-name schools, including Yale, the University of Chicago, Columbia University and more, have been accused of violating antitrust laws by working together to decide how much to give students in financial aid money. According to The Wall Street Journal, five former students have come together in a lawsuit, claiming the schools are taking advantage of financial aid by using a shared strategy to fix financial aids prices and limit how much is provided to students.

However, according to Yale Daily News, the schools can work together on financial aid methods only if they don’t consider what an applicant may need in terms of finances during the admissions period of decision-making. But, the students’ claim in the lawsuit that the schools did, in fact, violate those terms, saying the schools did consider how much money candidates’ or their families had in their bank accounts.

The students say some of the schools let in wealthier applicants and measured the financial needs of other students to see if they’d give them the boot from the waiting list or be given admission into other school programs.

“Under a true need-blind admissions system, all students would be admitted without regard to the financial circumstances of the student or student’s family,” the plaintiffs wrote in the suit, Newsweek reports. “Far from following this practice, at least nine Defendants for many years have favored wealthy applicants in the admissions process.”

The list of schools named in the suit is Vanderbilt University, Rice University, University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, Yale University, Georgetown University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Duke University, Dartmouth University, University of Chicago, Columbia University and Cornell University.

In the past 18 years, this alleged scheme may have affected at least 170,000 former undergraduate students. The students in the suit are asking for damages and for the financial aid strategy to end.