Brandeis University was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed on Oct. 7 in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois. The lawsuit names 40 universities, including 11 in New England and all eight Ivy League schools, as well as the non-profit College Board, as defendants. The lawsuit is a class-action brought by current and former students at the schools that are defendants. According to the lawsuit, College Board pressured the defendants to consider the income of non-custodial parents when calculating financial aid through College Board’s CSS profile. The defendants allegedly agreed, resulting in an average tuition increase of over $6,000. The plaintiffs allege that this scheme has been ongoing since at least 2006. The plaintiffs allege that this scheme is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act because the universities are competitors. The lawsuit claims that “Defendants’ concerted action has unlawfully caused the net price of education to increase. Net price is the cost per student of tuition plus room and board, decreased by financial aid. The average net price for the forty Defendant universities who use the [Non-Custodial Parent (NCP)] Agreed Pricing Strategy is approximately $6,200 more than for the ten non-NCP universities in the top 50 private universities–indicative of the anticompetitive effects from Defendants’ concerted activity. ”Regarding Brandeis, the complaint alleges “Brandeis University (‘Brandeis’) became a College Board member on October 31, 1954. Brandeis’s financial aid website links to the CSS Profile website and requires that applicants with a noncustodial parent must comply with the NCP requirements of the CSS Profile.” Under the Sherman Act, the plaintiffs are seeking damages equal to triple the amount of the increased tuition they paid, as well as an injunction against the defendants, including Brandeis, preventing them from continuing to “illegally conspire regarding their pricing and financial-aid policies and practices.” “The financial burden of college cannot be overstated in today’s world, and we believe our antitrust attorneys have uncovered a major influence on the rising cost of higher education. Those affected—mostly college applicants from divorced homes—could never have foreseen that this alleged scheme was in place, and students are left receiving less financial aid than they would in a fair market,” said Steve Berman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement on the website of the law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.

This is not the first time Brandeis has found itself in court. Last year, the university was ordered to pay $2.46 million to Robin Nelson-Bailey, a former vice president of human resources, after a jury found that Brandeis’ decision to fire her was motivated by racial and gender discrimination. In 2009, Brandeis found itself in court after trying to close the Rose Art Museum and sell some of its collection, a violation of an agreement with donors. That lawsuit was settled without any artwork being sold. In 2016, in the case of Doe v. Brandeis University, a judge ruled that Brandeis had “denied [a student] the ‘basic fairness’ to which he was entitled” in how they handled disciplinary proceedings relating to sexual assault after that student was not allowed to review any of the evidence against him prior to the proceeding. That case was similar to the 1996 case of Schaer v. Brandeis, where Brandeis was sued for the way it handled disciplinary proceedings against a different student. Brandeis was also sued in 2020 for charging full room and board costs to students despite campus being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That case was dismissed by the judge, but is currently being appealed. Plaintiffs’ attorneys Berman and Daniel Kurowski also represented the plaintiffs in that case. The case was assigned to Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, a Barack Obama appointee who has served on the federal bench since 2010. No court date has been set as of the publication of this article. The full text of the lawsuit can be found online. When asked for comment, Julie Jette, Assistant Vice President of Communications, told The Hoot that “Brandeis is not commenting on this ongoing litigation.”