Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Elite schools as a "price fixing cartel?"
That's the allegation in a lawsuit just filed in federal court in Chicago against 16 elite Universities: Brown, CalTech, Univ. of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Emory, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale. Those schools are part of a formal association called the "568 President's Group" that establishes a common method to evaluate need and award financial aid. The plaintiffs claim that over 170,000 students were shorted on the aid grants they should have received.
Part of the claim is particularly interesting: That the schools rigged the admissions game against students who would need aid by giving preferential treatment to the children of wealthy donors-- who of course can afford to pay full freight.
Section 568 of the Tax Code allows universities to set common metrics so long as admissions are "need blind"-- that is, so long as admissions decisions aren't influenced by a student's need for aid. The problem is that at least some of these schools seem to have strayed from the "need blind" model.
In a way, this kind of college is as much private club as educational institution. That restricts social mobility, limits the voices heard in our most important discussions (because these schools act too often as funnels to those discussions), and perpetuates wealth without accomplishment within families. Yeah, I have been a beneficiary of the "private club" aspect of Yale, but that is one reason I know what the problem is!
