Carnegie Mellon is among 40 private universities named in a federal price-fixing lawsuit

Forty of the nation’s top private colleges and universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, are accused in a federal class action lawsuit of colluding with the College Board to effectively overcharge students.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in Chicago in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The lawsuit says the alleged price fixing increased tuition by about $6,200 compared to top schools that were not part of the College Board’s agreement.

Specifically, it accuses the defendants of “conducting a concerted effort to defraud non-custodial parents – typically the parent with whom the student has not lived for most of the past year – from non-government financial aid applicants.” “To demand the provision of financial information,” said Hagens Berman, the law firm representing the plaintiffs.

“The College Board then requires schools to consider this amount when awarding financial aid, regardless of parents’ actual involvement or financial support,” the law firm said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

Without that agreement, the lawsuit says, the schools would compete to provide financial aid to enroll top candidates.

“Since 2006, the College Board has deliberately pushed to require schools to agree to consider the income and assets of noncustodial parents in financial aid decisions,” the complaint states.

“The defendants’ concerted action unlawfully caused the net price of education to increase. The net price is the cost per student for tuition plus room and board, less financial aid,” the complaint states.

Carnegie Mellon officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Other Pennsylvania schools named as defendants include Lehigh University, the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University.

Elsewhere, the list of defendants includes Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Cornell, Yale, Dartmouth and Brown universities, as well as other elite institutions from coast to coast.

According to Reuters, the college’s board said in a statement: “We are confident that we will prevail in this lawsuit.” The students’ lawyers estimate that there are at least 20,000 potential class members who were harmed by the alleged conduct.

It names two plaintiffs who she said were harmed by the practice.

Eileen Chang attended Cornell. One of her parents is disabled and has a much higher income than her other parent. Cornell’s tuition for her was about $70,000 a year.

She received both state and non-state need-based financial aid.

“Chang emailed Cornell University’s financial aid office and asked if they could remove her non-custodial parent’s income because that parent had a disability and was unable to contribute. Chang’s request was rejected and she was told that non-custodial parents would be expected to help pay for tuition. Chang’s custodial parent took out a Parent Plus loan to pay the remainder of her tuition. She paid artificially high prices to study at Cornell University due to the defendant’s anti-competitive practices and suffered antitrust damages as a result.”

According to Reuters, the plaintiffs and lawyers are seeking more than $5 million in damages and a court order to end the alleged price conspiracy.