Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2021. (Photo by AFP)

Sixteen Ivy League and elite universities in the United State have been sued for allegedly illegally conspiring to eliminate competitive financial aid offers to students in a price-fixing scheme.

US media reported that the top universities were sued in federal court for allegedly illegally conspiring to eliminate competitive financial aid offers to admitted students in a price-fixing scheme.

The top US universities accused of illegally limiting financial aid include Brown University, California Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northwestern University, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University.

The lawsuit filed against the top universities by former students alleges that the universities broke antitrust laws by using a shared methodology to determine student financial aid.

The lawsuit alleges that the shared methodology used in admissions by a consortium of universities called 568 Presidents Group, is explicitly aimed to reduce or eliminate price competition among its members and says such an elimination of competition is simply a means of coalescing around a uniform and lower level of aid to all prospective students.

The suit alleges the methodology illegally inflated the cost of attendance for all students receiving financial aid and resulted in the overcharging of over 170,000 financial-aid recipients by at least hundreds of millions of dollars.

The complaint, which was filed on Sunday in a federal court in Illinois, was not the first lawsuit targeting elite US colleges over their controversial admissions policies.

Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are also facing lawsuits for their admissions policies. They have defended their race-conscious admissions practices against lawsuits brought by opponents of affirmative action.

Affirmative action refers to a set of government policies and practices seeking to eliminate discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, creed or nationality in admissions policies.