From the Columbia Daily Spectator: A federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit... alleging that Columbia, dozens of peer private universities, and the College Board coordinated to inflate attendance costs for students with divorced parents through shared financial aid standards. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to plausibly establish an illegal agreement in violation of federal antitrust law...
The plaintiffs alleged that the universities violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by coordinating how they considered financial data from noncustodial parents when determining aid awards. U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis dismissed the case without prejudice, finding that the plaintiffs’ claims were too speculative to meet the legal standard required under the Sherman Act...
The suit also named the College Board—which manages the College Scholarship Service Profile system used by Columbia and other private institutions to collect detailed family financial information—as a defendant... In the complaint, the plaintiffs argued that the universities “entered into an agreement to reduce the amount of financial aid awarded” to students by requiring them to submit financial information from noncustodial parents, known as “NCP data.” The lawsuit claims that this collective practice “reduced competition among the University Defendants because they all considered the same financial information,” limiting the ability of any one school to offer a more generous or flexible aid package...
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