Dartmouth, Three Other Colleges Ask to Settle Student Aid Case

Dartmouth College and Northwestern, Rice, and Vanderbilt universities on Friday agreed to a $166 million settlement over an alleged scheme to collude on student financial aid packages.

The elite colleges asked the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to approve the settlement, which brings to $284 million the cash payments for students. The lawsuit adds to a bevy of legal challenges against universities, which have also been hit over considering race in admissions and not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus.

A group of former students sued 17 schools in 2022, alleging they conspired to offer financial aid packages based on a common formula instead of competing to attract students with more generous offers. The University of Chicago, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Duke, and Emory universities had previously announced settlements in the case, which was brought on behalf of all undergraduates who got at least some need-based financial aid at the defendant institutions for as long as two decades — a class that could number up to 200,000 people.

The third group of settlements “were entered into after approximately two years of hard-fought litigation, extensive discovery, and arm’s length negotiations,” according to a proposed order in the case.

The latest agreement adds to pressure on the remaining seven universities in the case: the California Institute of Technology, Cornell, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, and the University of Pennsylvania.

In the latest agreement, Dartmouth and Rice agreed to pay $33.75 million each, Northwestern settled for $43.5 million, and Vanderbilt for $55 million. Vanderbilt and Rice had previously disclosed the agreement.

The case is Henry v. Brown Univ., N.D. Ill., No. 22-cv-00125, 2/23/24.