WORCESTER—Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is among 40 private colleges and universities facing a class-action lawsuit that accuses the institutions and College Board of engaging in financial aid price-fixing.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claims the schools participated in a conspiracy to raise the cost of college by approximately $6,200, particularly affecting students from divorced or separated families.
The lawsuit alleges that WPI and other top schools, including MIT, Brown, and NYU, conspired to require noncustodial parents — typically the parent a student did not live with most of the time — to submit financial information when determining non-federal financial aid. This, the lawsuit claims, allowed these institutions to inflate tuition costs, violating federal antitrust law and contributing to the rising cost of higher education.
According to the Department of Justice, antitrust laws “prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition.”
The suit also highlights that while FAFSA, the federal financial aid application, does not require noncustodial parent financial data, the CSS Profile, used by many private institutions, does. By relying on financial information from both custodial and noncustodial parents, the lawsuit argues that students receive less financial aid than they would in a competitive, fair market.
Steve Berman, cofounder of Hagens Berman, the law firm leading the case, said in a press release, “This alleged scheme has imposed unnecessary financial strain on students, particularly those from divorced families, and has contributed to the growing student debt crisis.”
In addition to WPI, other Massachusetts schools named in the lawsuit include Harvard University, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University.
“We are aware of the lawsuit filed against the College Board, and many colleges and universities, including WPI,” a spokesperson from WPI told the Worcester Guardian. “WPI does not comment on pending litigation.’”
