Yale, Georgetown, Other Top Schools Illegally Collude To Limit Student Financial Aid, Lawsuit Alleges (wsj.com) 52
Sixteen major U.S. universities, including Yale University, Georgetown University and Northwestern University, are being sued for alleged antitrust violations because of the way they work together to determine financial-aid awards for students. From a report: According to a lawsuit filed in Illinois federal court late Sunday by law firms representing five former students who attended some of the schools, the universities engaged in price fixing and unfairly limited aid by using a shared methodologyÂto calculate applicants' financial need. Schools are allowed under federal law to collaborate on their formulas, but only if they don't consider applicants' financial need in admissions decisions. The suit alleges these schools do weigh candidates' ability to pay in certain circumstances, and therefore shouldn't be eligible for the antitrust exemption. The suit seeks damages and a permanent end to the schools' collaboration in calculating financial need and awarding aid. College admissions practices are being challenged more broadly and pillars of the decades-old admissions system are crumbling. The Supreme Court is expected to decide as soon as this week whether to take up two cases centered on affirmative action, involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sue the banks as well! (Score:3)
Sue the banks as well! as the banks / loan servicing have near zero risk if someone can't cover there student loan
Pretty thin evidence of collusion (Score:2)
So they used the same computer application to determine need based admission? I'm pretty sure my credit card companies do something similar. It's not even unreasonable.
no but funding parts of school and way schools (Score:3)
no but funding parts of school and way schools push loans on people who can't get financial-aid.
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International residents face a radically different process, and those Americans too dumb to write a proper sentence know fuck all about anything related to college. Well, unless you're playing on the football team, or are an autistic black/Chinese/double lesbian otherkin amputee with congenital syphilis and riding every affirmative action plan created... But in that case, you're not going to be posting that opinion here. Your comment is so garbled I am not sure what you tried to say.
Re: Pretty thin evidence of collusion (Score:2)
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I wish these schools would discourage more people from taking out $200K in loans in fields that are going to pay $50K/yr on graduation. I'd like to see the loan application include salaries from recent graduates compared to the size of loan payments, and then more people would choose not to sign up for these huge loans. I'd also love to see a requirement that the financial aid people explain all of this to prospective students. In many cases borrowing $200K to go to an elite school is not a good deal to
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I wish these schools would discourage more people from taking out $200K in loans
Federal loans are limited to $12,500 per year. Private institutions are unwilling to loan more than that without federal loan guarantees.
Those borrowing $200k are in professional post-graduate education such as medical school.
There are myths about airheads borrowing $200k to get a degree in transgender studies, but that isn't reality.
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I'm having trouble with this concept of being 'entitled' to financial aid, and then suing because you think the gift you received wasn't large enough. Instead, why aren't these students grateful for the aid they did receive? It cost billions of dollars to run these universities, if no one is paying tuition who pays the bills? Sure a few school can live off from their endowments, but there are just a handful like that.
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I'm having trouble with this concept of being 'entitled' to financial aid
You could say the same about wages since no one is entitled to a job, but collusion to suppress wages is illegal.
Instead, why aren't these students grateful for the aid they did receive?
Because the process isn't fair, at least that is what they claim.
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So they used the same computer application to determine need based admission?
Using the same methodology is not illegal. Colluding to do so is. If there was an agreement between the schools to use a standard methodology, that is collusion, and the plaintiffs may win their case.
Good sir, the banks certainly wouldn't lobby (Score:2)
And they certainly wouldn't use a huge influx of H-1B labor to make up for the shortage of college grads due to the sheer number of people who can't afford to go to school.
Heavens no. It's those lazy millennials that are at fault. Them and there avocado toast and lattes...
Also look at the NCAA sports students! (Score:2)
Also look at the NCAA sports students!
Bootstraps strike again (Score:1)
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Let's also get rid of sports drafts and let the teams bid for the best players. Won't that be fun.
And golf handicaps aren't fair to the best players, right?
stop forcing players to go to college and have (Score:2)
stop forcing players to go to college and have real minors and / or let them go HS to PRO with no gap.
But then how would... (Score:2)
the NFL get the rest of the student population to pay to train their players?
Don't believe me? Look at the salaries of coaches in the SEC schools.
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SEC is actually profitable, though.
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Harvard and Ivy League schools have never been about meritocracy. They are the quintessential "old boys club", although now they also allow women and jews.
Loans (Score:2)
If you give out loans easily, they say that is predatory lending. If you do not give out loans easily, they say that is unfair lending.
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Financial aid consists of more than just loans, and that's the point here. Are there schools competing to win students by offering grants and scholarships, or colluding to minimize their expenditures in these areas?
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If you give out loans easily, they say that is predatory lending. If you do not give out loans easily, they say that is unfair lending.
Yes, there is more than one way to break the law. You can go 200 mph on the highway or 20 mph on the highway, and unless the latter is because of a traffic jam you are going to get pulled over either way.
Re: Loans (Score:2)
Except the speed limit is not posted and is decided arbitrarily when someone gets mad because they do not like the pace of traffic on a particular day.
Society really needs to make them pay dearly (Score:3)
I would suggest starting with abolishing student lending by the feds (including a complete write down for all student loans in exchange for a tax penalty equal to 10% of the debt load per student) followed by toughening up 501c rules for schools that require them to aggressively use their endowments and grants to lower the cost of education lest they be treated as a for-profit institution.
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We want a well-educated society. If you have another way to achieve that, I'm all ears...
Note that for-profit student loaning orgs often ripped students off. The feedback cycle of capitalism has to be fairly short to be effective, but problems that don't manifest themselves until a decade or two down the road avoid much of the correction mechanism of capitalism.
loan very low to no interest and income based (Score:2)
loan very low to no interest and income based payment for max of X years.
And no BIG tax bill at the end / tax bill with none of the interest added in.
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So you are not outright against federal student loans, but just don't like the way it's currently done, correct?
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The banks / schools need to have some skin in the game vs none right now.
Typical slashdotter (Score:2)
"Yale, Georgetown, Other Top Schools Illegally Collude To Limit Student Financial Aid, Lawsuit Alleges"
soUndS Like YoU guyS ARe COnsPiraCY TheoRISts. Lol.
WHAT NExt, bIG PhaRMa is COlludiNG tO PrOlong coViD. LoL.
I trUsT eVeRyonE.
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Reading this gave me cancer.
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It gave me COVID.
The grey area of the law is the drama area (Score:1)
The rules are probably subject to interpretation such that this will come down to a judgement call by a judge and/or jury.
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From tfa:
"Schools are allowed under federal law to collaborate on their [financial aid] formulas, but only if they don’t consider applicants’ financial need in admissions decisions. The suit alleges these schools do weigh candidates’ ability to pay in certain circumstances, and therefore shouldn’t be eligible for the antitrust exemption."
Yes != Alleges (Score:2)
"Yes" would be used to report on the plaintiffs winning the lawsuit, not on filing it. Why is slashdot confirming the accusation, while also admitting it is only an allegation?
I'll bet the editor got an A+ in Clickbait at journalism school!
And the government (Score:4, Interesting)
And the Federal government acts as a catalyst even if they are not the root cause. By approving billions of loans to pay these corrupt schemes year after year, they are the largest enablers in the country.
Without 95%+ approval rates to 17 year olds with no credit history, the colleges would have to reduce prices to reasonable levels, and provide actual aid. But preying on financial illiteracy of the young people, and the guarantee by government to extract those monies, they can increase prices with impunity.
Cut the enablers, and the crazy pricing will end.
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Not just that, but all this really started with the GI Bill and Veteran's benefits -- free gov't money.
Check any flight school today and their prices pretty much match exactly what Veteran's benefits will pay, plus a small amount. Trying to get a student loan for flight schools is damn difficult, and if you talk to an admissions counsellor there every third phrase out of their mouth is "veteran's benefits". Just one example.
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Clearly you don't understand that when somebody signs up for a hitch in the Armed Forces their contract includes, among other things, various benefits to be paid later, including the GI Bill and a number of other things lumped together as Veteran's Benefits. It's not free money, every last one of us earned it, often by putting our asses on the line.
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That isn't how it started and the simple economic fact is it distorts the education market as free money for the schools.
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Flight school has always been expensive. And the reward at the end isn't great - sho
Affirmative action (Score:2)
Article without Paywall (Score:2)
Here's another article covering the same thing, including a list of the schools:
https://yaledailynews.com/blog... [yaledailynews.com]
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They're all exclusive schools that probably can charge whatever they want and have an endless stream of well heeled students. I attended one of the schools on the list. My family could not afford it, by any stretch of the imagination. Financial aid was a sham. It was "generous" for the first year and was dramatically dialed back in subsequent years as they knew the family would find a way to cough up the cash. And we did. There was also a large number of foreign students who were admitted because they
Where is the "tech" part of this news? (Score:2)
Yale or Brown? (Score:1)