The recent legal action follows another high-profile antitrust case that may have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for thousands of former college students.
Some of America’s prominent colleges and universities were accused of overcharging students with separated or divorced parents.
Forty prominent universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are accused in a federal class action lawsuit in an Illinois district court of conspiring to keep tuition costs high for students with “noncustodial parents.”
Students wishing to apply for nonfederal financial aid must use the CSS Profile, an application managed by the College Board. The College Board is also in charge of managing the SAT and Advanced Placement courses across the country.
The application requires students to disclose their noncustodial parents’ financial holdings. Two former Cornell University students and a Boston University student claim in the lawsuit that the College Board’s mandate reduced the financial aid available to them and other students.
One of the attorneys defending the students, Steve Berman, stated that the team had discovered a “major factor” contributing to the rising cost of higher education.
Berman stated: “Those affected – mostly college applicants from divorced homes – could never have foreseen that this alleged scheme was in place, and students are left receiving less financial aid than they would in a fair market.”
The legal action follows a separate class action that resulted in a $284 million settlement this year, accusing several of the same schools of financial aid price-fixing. Students who attend these universities around the nation might qualify to receive hundreds or thousands of dollars from that arrangement.
The College Board said in a Wednesday statement that it will win the latest case.
A spokesperson for New York University, John Beckman, declared in a statement that the claim has no basis.
He stated: “NYU intends to vigorously defend itself and its financial aid policies and procedures.”
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Tufts University, Cornell University, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Columbia University, MIT, Duke University, Brandeis University and Georgetown University refuse to comment on the lawsuit on Wednesday.
