Yale, Cornell, and Other Prestigious US Private Universities Sued in Bulk for Alleged Student Selection Collusion

[Photo by AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] Prestigious private universities in the United States, including Ivy League schools such as Yale and Cornell, have been hit with a wave of lawsuits alleging misconduct in their freshman admissions processes.

On the 9th, five university alumni filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Chicago against 16 prestigious private universities, accusing them of collusion, according to major foreign media reports on the 10th (local time). All five plaintiffs are reported to be graduates of the 16 universities sued.

The plaintiffs claim that the defendant universities reduced financial aid for undergraduates through collusion, which violates antitrust laws. They argue that the universities deliberately excluded students who could not afford tuition without competition in attracting outstanding students through financial aid. Furthermore, they assert that due to this collusion, over the past 20 years, approximately 170,000 financial aid recipients have been overcharged by hundreds of millions of dollars.

All 16 universities sued are confirmed to be members of the 568 Presidents Group.

The 568 Presidents Group is an organization formed in 1998 by universities that adopt a need-blind admissions policy. Need-blind means that the financial status of applicants, such as whether they apply for scholarships, is not considered during the admissions process. The U.S. Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 specifies in Section 568 that schools applying the need-blind policy are granted an antitrust exemption.

The plaintiffs argue that although the 568 Group's stated purpose is to encourage need-blind admissions under the Section 568 exemption, in practice, the opposite occurred. They claim that universities belonging to the 568 Presidents Group colluded by applying a joint method to determine whether students had the ability to pay tuition during the admissions process. They further point out that this was an illegal abuse of the provision that grants antitrust exemption to schools adopting the need-blind policy.

The plaintiffs also claim that more than half of the universities sued secretly provided favorable privileges to the children of past donors as well as potential future donors.

The plaintiffs stated, "Prestigious private universities have been gatekeepers of the American Dream," and criticized, "The misconduct of private universities was severe in that it narrowed the pathway for social mobility."

This lawsuit comes amid growing dissatisfaction with the high cost of college tuition in the U.S., where income inequality is worsening. The tuition increase rate at private universities in the U.S. has outpaced inflation for decades. Current tuition at Yale and Columbia University is $59,950 and $60,514 respectively. Including dormitory fees and textbook costs, the total expenses approach $80,000.

Many Ivy League universities are among those sued. The universities sued include Brown, University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, University of Pennsylvania, and California Institute of Technology.

Only Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton among the Ivy League universities were not sued. Harvard reportedly refused to join the 568 Group, citing concerns that it might limit its ability to support students.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.