Jan 10, 2022: Yale University is one of more than a dozen higher education institutions in the United States that is being prosecuted for allegedly breaking no-confidence laws and unfairly restricting student funding awards, Wall Street reported.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit was filed in Illinois federal court by lawyers representing five alumni who attended some of the 16 institutions.

The suit pivots on the thorny issue of how universities determine a student’s ability to pay university fees, which have reached astronomical heights in the US and fomented a student debt crisis. It claims that the universities unlawfully used a shared methodology to determine financial aid awards because the institutions sometimes weigh candidates’ ability to pay for their higher education.

The suit pivots on the thorny issue of how universities determine a student’s ability to pay university fees, which have reached astronomical heights in the US and fomented a student debt crisis.

The suit claims that the universities unlawfully used a shared methodology to determine financial aid awards because the institutions sometimes weigh candidates’ ability to pay for their higher education, said the WSJ.

As per the WSJ report, universities in the US are allowed to collaborate on aid award formulas, but only if they practice so-called “need-blind” admissions that don’t take into account a student’s ability to pay when determining who gets in and who doesn’t.

The lawsuit is seeking damages as well as a permanent end to the institutions working together to calculate financial need and determine the size of aid packages that candidates are awarded. According to the WSJ, lawyers claim that more than 170,000 undergraduate students who attended the schools named in the lawsuit and received partial financial aid dating back up 18 years may be eligible to join the suit as plaintiffs.

According to Education Data Intiative, some 43.2 million Americans have student loan debt, which places the total amount of student loan debt outstanding in the US at $1.75 trillion.

The lawsuit takes aim at some of the most prestigious institutes of higher education in the country.

In addition to Yale, other universities named in the lawsuit include Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University and Vanderbilt University.

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