FAMILY AFFAIR

Elite Colleges Overcharged Students With Divorced Parents: Lawsuit

“Those affected could never have foreseen that this alleged scheme was in place,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.

A federal class action lawsuit filed this week in Illinois alleges that 40 elite private U.S. colleges and universities conspired to overcharge students with divorced or separated parents. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the schools—which include Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Stanford, and Yale—require students seeking non-federal financial aid to use an online application called CSS profile, which is administered by the College Board. That app, they alleged, requires students to disclose the financial assets of “noncustodial parents,” which they claimed is then calculated to reduce the amount of financial aid made available to them. The lawsuit estimates 20,000 people nationwide have been potentially affected in the last 18 years. “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,” Steve Berman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told multiple outlets. The College Board told The Washington Post “we are confident that we will prevail in this action.”