Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, Rice University and Vanderbilt University agreed Friday to pay $166 million to settle a lawsuit that accused them and other schools of colluding to determine students’ financial-aid packages.
They were part of a group of 17 highly selective institutions that were accused in 2022 of illegal price-fixing; 10 now have settled or formally agreed to do so.
Dartmouth and Rice each will pay $33.75 million, Northwestern will pay $43.5 million and Vanderbilt will pay $55 million to settle the suit, according to filings made in an Illinois federal court Friday. The payments will be directed to a fund for students harmed by the alleged collusion.
The colleges were allowed under a federal antitrust exemption to collaborate on aid calculations, but only if they didn’t take financial need into consideration when reviewing applicants. They also couldn’t discuss aid offers for individual students. The suit alleged that the schools did consider finances in some circumstances, for instance giving an edge to children of wealthy donors or when selecting candidates from their wait lists.
The colleges worked together under what was called the 568 Presidents Group, a reference to the section of the 1994 legislation that provided the antitrust exemption. The arrangement allowed schools to avoid bidding wars for low-income applicants but also limited how much they could favor wealthy applicants to keep scholarship spending to a minimum. The exemption expired in fall 2022, and the group dissolved that November.
