"A federal judge in Illinois has dismissed a lawsuit accusing the College Board and 40 highly selective private colleges and universities of conspiring in a price-fixing scheme to inflate tuition costs. In a decision released last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis determined that the plaintiffs, a Boston University student and an alum of Cornell University, "have not plausibly alleged that Defendants entered into an agreement" demonstrating collusion on pricing."
""Nothing in Plaintiffs' complaint suggests that the University Defendants exchanged their own internal financial aid decisionmaking processes or guidelines or otherwise shared with the other University Defendants the amount of financial aid they planned to offer a particular student," she wrote. "Nor does the complaint allege that the University Defendants all agreed on the same exact formula for calculating financial aid based on the [noncustodial parent's] financial information.""
Plaintiffs, a Boston University student and a Cornell alum, alleged that the College Board and 40 selective private colleges overcharged students of divorced or separated parents by considering noncustodial parent financial information when awarding aid. Plaintiffs claimed the formula increased their tuition by an average of $6,200 and traced the alleged practice to a 2006 College Board requirement for both parents' financial information on College Scholarship Service profiles. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis acknowledged that the practice raised prices at the named institutions but found no plausible allegation of an agreement among defendants and dismissed the lawsuit.
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