Forty of the top private universities across the United States are under fire after a lawsuit was filed accusing the institutions of conspiring to overcharge students for their education.
According to the lawsuit, these universities bilked applicants from divorced or separated homes by including the financial backgrounds of noncustodial parents when determining financial aid packages.
Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown and Yale, alongside dozens of other top schools, were targeted in the class-action lawsuit filed by a Boston University student and Cornell University alum in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Monday.
The lawsuit, which seeks $5 million in monetary damages and a court order to stop the alleged conspiracy, also includes the College Board, the nonprofit that developed the financial aid methodology the schools allegedly used.
The universities engaged in “a concerted action” to require that an applicant’s noncustodial parents, meaning the parent a student does not primarily live with, provide their financial information to be eligible for nonfederal financial aid, the lawsuit states.
The class-action suit further alleges that the College Board requires schools to take that information into account when determining financial aid allotments, regardless of the noncustodial parent’s actual involvement in or financial assistance to an applicant’s education.
