Lawsuit accuses 40 colleges of pricing conspiracy

A class action lawsuit filed Monday accuses 40 of the most highly selective private American colleges and universities, as well as the nonprofit College Board, of conspiring to overcharge certain students for tuition.

The suit, filed by a current Boston University student and a Cornell alumnus, claims that the institutions’ tuition calculations for students who live with only one parent are unfair because they require both parents to submit financial information, even if one is a noncustodial parent who does not contribute to the student’s tuition. 

It alleges that the oversight increases tuition by an average of $6,200 a year for affected students. The plaintiffs are seeking $5 million in damages and a court order halting the consideration of noncustodial parental income in financial aid packaging. 

The College Board runs the College Scholarship Service Profile, which all 40 of the defendant colleges require applicants to fill out. Only about half of the 270 colleges that use the Profile require noncustodial parents’ financial information, according to the College Board. The lawsuit accuses the nonprofit of pressuring colleges to adopt that requirement in 2006.

The lawsuit is the second recent class action antitrust suit filed against elite universities. In 2022, 17 institutions, many of which were also named in Monday’s suit, were sued for allegedly fixing tuition prices by illegally colluding on common financial aid formulas. Ten of those institutions have settled so far for a total of $248 million.