It isn’t just business firms that can violate the antitrust laws — universities can, too, and have been hit with suits for anticompetitive behavior.
In today’s Martin Center article, T. J. Harker, a former United States attorney, writes about the recently settled and ongoing antitrust complaints against Duke University:
In January 2022, numerous students and alumni filed a federal complaint against 17 of the nation’s elite colleges, including Duke University. The plaintiffs alleged that the elite university defendants (ignominiously dubbed the “568 Cartel”) had violated federal antitrust laws. Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that, beginning in 2003, a consortium of elite universities agreed “on a common formula . . . regarding financial aid” and to “exchange competitively sensitive information concerning . . . formulas and pricing.” The defendants allegedly called this information-sharing process the “Consensus Methodology.”
Duke, along with Brown, Columbia, Yale, and Emory, recently settled, but Harker argues that there could be further action from the Justice Department against Duke and the other schools.
Read the whole thing.