higher education

16 Ivy League and Elite Universities Sued for Alleged Financial Aid Conspiracy

The suit alleges the conspiracy artificially inflated the cost of attendance for all students receiving financial aid

PROVIDENCE, RI - APRIL 25: Sayles Hall on the campus of Brown University in Providence, RI is pictured on April 25, 2019.
Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Sixteen Ivy League and elite U.S. universities were sued in federal court for allegedly illegally conspiring to eliminate competitive financial aid offers to students in a price fixing scheme.

The suit alleges the conspiracy artificially inflated the cost of attendance for all students receiving financial aid and resulted in the overcharging of “over 170,000 financial-aid recipients by at least hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The demand for a class action jury trial, filed on Sunday in an Illinois federal court by five former Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Duke University students, seeks to compensate people who received financial aid packages that did not fully cover the cost of tuition, room and board from one of the 16 self-described “need-blind” universities since 2003.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

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