17 Prestigious Universities Face $685M Lawsuit for Prioritizing Wealthy Students

Highlights:

• 17 elite universities face a $685-million lawsuit for allegedly prioritizing students’ finances in school admissions
• The lawsuit represented 224,000 former and current students
• The universities said they were immune from liabilities, and denied any wrongdoings

Seventeen prestigious universities are facing a $685-million lawsuit from former and current students for allegedly violating an antitrust law over favoring wealthy applicants in school admissions.

In a court filing in Chicago on Monday, the students said they met the legal criteria to sue infamous universities namely Brown University, California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, The Trustees of Columbia University, Cornell University, and Trustees of Dartmouth College, for allegedly breaching a pledge not to prioritize students’ finances in school admissions. They said the move was in violation to US antitrust law.

Similarly sued were Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, The Johns Hopkins Univeristy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University.

Others included University of Notre Dame Du Lac, The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, William Marsh Rice University, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University.

The schools were first sued in 2022, with the lawsuit representing some 224,000 students who were allegedly shortchanged on financial aid over a 20-year period.

So far, ten schools, including Brown, Yale, and Columbia, have settled worth $284 million with the students, but said that the settlement was not an admission of any wrongdoing.

A meritless lawsuit

In a statement, the University of Pennsylvania said the lawsuit was meritless and that the actual evidence in the case makes clear “that Penn does not favor in admissions students whose families have made or pledged donations to Penn, whatever the amount.”

Other schools came to their defense, saying that the plaintiffs’ damages estimate was fundamentally unreliable and should be excluded.

Meanwhile, Robert Gilbert of Gilbert Litigators & Counselors, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the students presented very substantial evidence that the defendants allegedly colluded with each other for 20 years on financial aid.

It also said that the illegal collusion resulted in providing far less aid to students than they would have been provided in a free market.

The defendants have earlier argued that they were immune from liabilities, asserting that federal law permits colleges and universities to discuss and develop common principles of analysis for financial aid.

The plaintiffs countered that the universities were not entitled to the federal shield which provided immunity to “need-blind” schools.

They maintained that there were evidence showing the schools actually considered applicants’ financial history in making admissions decisions.