The 568 Presidents Group was a consortium of American universities and colleges practicing need-blind admissions. The group was founded in 1998 in response to section 568 of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. [1] It was dissolved effective November 4, 2022 [2] while it was being sued. [3]
In response to several prestigious colleges and universities holding "Overlap Meetings" to set similar tuition and financial aid levels, the Justice Department began an antitrust investigation in 1989 and in 1991 filed a Sherman Antitrust Act suit against 57 colleges and universities. [4] [5] While the Ivy League institutions settled, [6] MIT contested the charges on the grounds that the practice was not anticompetitive because it prevented bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships and ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students. [7] [8] MIT ultimately prevailed when the Justice Department settled the case in 1994. [9] [10]
In 1994, Congress passed the Improving America's Schools Act. Section 568 of this Act expands upon the issues in the MIT settlement. Section 568 states that is not unlawful under the antitrust laws for two or more need-blind institutions to agree or attempt to agree:
The amendment specifically prohibits the sharing of any information on the amount or terms of any prospective, individual aid award and makes clear that the exemption does not apply to the awarding of federal financial aid.
The following institutions were at one point members of the 568 group: [11] [12] [13]
These institutions have settled the 2022 price fixing class action lawsuit for the following amounts: [14]
Columbia University, officially Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest in the United States.
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference of eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, and in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The term Ivy League is used more broadly to refer to the eight schools that belong to the league, which are globally-renowned as elite colleges associated with academic excellence, highly selective admissions, and social elitism. The term was used as early as 1933, and it became official in 1954 following the formation of the Ivy League athletic conference.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science.
In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses in order to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.
Price fixing is an anticompetitive agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand.
Robert Cox Merton is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model. In 1997 Merton together with Myron Scholes were awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for the method to determine the value of derivatives.
Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust law, anti-monopoly law, and trade practices law; the act of pushing for antitrust measures or attacking monopolistic companies is commonly known as trust busting.
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.
Student financial aid in the United States is funding that is available exclusively to students attending a post-secondary educational institution in the United States. This funding is used to assist in covering the many costs incurred in the pursuit of post-secondary education. Financial aid is available from federal and state governments, educational institutions, and private organizations. It can be awarded in the form of grants, loans, work-study, and scholarships. In order to apply for federal financial aid, students must first complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
The Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (BCC) is a public community college in the Bronx, New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system.
Need-blind admission in the United States refers to a college admission policy that does not take into account an applicant's financial status when deciding whether to accept them. This approach typically results in a higher percentage of accepted students who require financial assistance and requires the institution to have a substantial endowment or other funding sources to support the policy. Institutions that participated in an antitrust exemption granted by Congress were required by law to be need-blind until September 30, 2022.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) was legislation signed into United States law on November 8, 1965, as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society domestic agenda. Johnson chose Texas State University, his alma mater, as the signing site. The law was intended "to strengthen the educational resources of our colleges and universities and to provide financial assistance for students in postsecondary and higher education". It increased federal money given to universities, created scholarships, gave low-interest loans for students, and established a National Teachers Corps. The "financial assistance for students" is covered in Title IV of the HEA.
The American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) is a United States-based educational accreditation organization with a focus on fostering liberal arts education, both in higher education and in earlier schooling.
Christine A. Varney is an American antitrust attorney who served as the U.S. assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division for the Obama Administration and as a Federal Trade commissioner in the Clinton Administration. Since August 2011, Varney has been a partner of the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she chairs the antitrust department.
The lysine price-fixing conspiracy was an organized effort during the mid-1990s to raise the price of the animal feed additive lysine. It involved five companies that had commercialized high-tech fermentation technologies, including American company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Japanese companies Ajinomoto and Kyowa Hakko Kogyo, and Korean companies Sewon America Inc. and Cheil Jedang Ltd. A criminal investigation resulted in fines and three-year prison sentences for three executives of ADM who colluded with the other companies to fix prices. The foreign companies settled with the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division in September through December 1996. Each firm and four executives from the Asian firms pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to aid in further investigation against ADM. The cartel had been able to raise lysine prices 70% within their first nine months of cooperation.
Sharyn O’Halloran is the Strategic Academic Leadership Initiative Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin and Trinity Professorial Fellow. In 2006 she was named the George Blumenthal Professor of Political Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City., where she served as the Senior Vice Dean and Chief Academic Officer at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University in New York City.[1] A political scientist and economist by training, O’Halloran has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of international trade and finance, regulation and institutional reform, economic growth and democratic transitions, and the political representation of minorities.
George Ward Stocking Sr. was an American economist, who was one of the pioneers of industrial organization and an early writer on international cartels.
Broadcast Music Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System Inc., 441 U.S. 1 (1979), was an important antitrust case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. It examined a complaint brought by CBS affiliates that the method in which broadcast companies determine fees for the issuance of blanket licenses was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Supreme Court ruled that the issuance of blanket licenses was not a violation of the act, holding that the nature of blanket licenses did not arise to price fixing.
Eugene I. Kimmelman is an American attorney and consumer protection advocate who specializes in antitrust law. Since January 2021, Kimmelman has served as a senior advisor in the Department of Justice (DOJ). During the Obama administration, Kimmelman served within the DOJ as chief counsel of the Antitrust Division.
Lina M. Khan is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2021. She is the youngest-ever FTC chair. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.