Universities Lose Bid to End Financial Aid Price-Fixing Case (1)

A group of five elite private universities including Cornell, Penn, and MIT must face antitrust claims they conspired to fix the price of financial aid and favored wealthy students in admissions.

Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Monday denied summary judgment to five nonsettling defendants—also Notre Dame and Georgetown—shooting down the colleges’ argument that student plaintiffs failed to show an overarching conspiracy to artificially inflate the net price of attendance.

The lawsuit centers around activities of the “568 Presidents Group” of colleges, named after an antitrust exemption that permits some ...