Ivy League Schools Probed by GOP Lawmakers Over Tuition Prices

A group of House and Senate Judiciary Republicans is demanding documents from the eight Ivy League schools, citing concerns they may have colluded to raise tuition prices.

The request, led by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio), Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa), and other members of the committees is the latest scrutiny into the cost of higher education at elite universities.

“The House and Senate Committees are concerned that the Ivy League member institutions’ coordinated practices and alleged collusion violate the Sherman Act and that the institutions continue to benefit from their prior collusion, despite no longer having an antitrust exemption,” the House committee said in a press release. “The structure and operation of the higher education market strongly suggests the market is not functioning properly and is subject to widespread violations of antitrust laws.”

The inquiry comes as the Trump administration has been pulling or freezing billions of dollars in federal funding from top-ranked colleges and universities.

It also follows ongoing private litigation against some of the Ivies and other private colleges and universities that claims they violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring to keep financial aid packages low, in part by unlawfully considering students’ ability to pay.

Yale, Columbia, Brown, Duke, and Johns Hopkins are among the schools that have settled in the private suit for millions of dollars. The remaining nonsettling defendants are Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The congressmen’s letters asked the schools to produce documents that include communication between university employees about creating tuition rates, legacy admissions, admissions based on ability to pay or donate, and policies on financial aid distribution or student admissions.

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, also joined the letters, which were dated April 8 but released Thursday.