For five decades, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education operated on the premise that need-meeting financial aid at elite private colleges could be managed as a coordinated system rather than through competition among institutions. COFHE dissolved on Dec. 31, 2025, without explanation. Six weeks later, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a ruling that offers some insight into the legal environment surrounding the consortium’s former members.
On Aug. 7, U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley denied motions to dismiss in D'Amico et al. v. Consortium on Financing Higher Education et al., a class-action antitrust lawsuit alleging that Dartmouth and 31 other former COFHE member institutions conspired to inflate tuition through binding early decision policies. The case will proceed.
The lawsuit is one of several involving allegations of financial-aid and admissions coordination among highly selective private institutions. Dartmouth and 16 other schools are already entering settlements in a related case, Henry et al. v. Brown University et al. The D'Amico case advances a broader theory of harm, however, and Kelley’s ruling provides several significant findings on the plaintiffs’ claims.
At the center of the case is the Ivy League Agreement, a longstanding agreement under which the eight Ivy League institutions commit to honoring one another’s early decision admits rather than attempting to recruit those students with more favorable offers. Kelley characterized the agreement as “direct evidence” of a noncompetition arrangement among the five Ivy League institutions that participate in early decision: Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. Harvard, Princeton and Yale do not participate in early decision and therefore are not named in the agreement as described in the ruling. Kelley also found it reasonable to infer that other COFHE members operated under similar understandings.
The finding is significant to the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims because it provides evidence of an agreement not to compete, rather than simply parallel conduct among institutions. Establishing an actual agreement is a central element of an antitrust claim alleging coordinated behavior.
The court also addressed the statute of limitations. Two of the four named plaintiffs were admitted through early decision in 2018, more than four years before the lawsuit was filed. The defendants argued that the claims were therefore time-barred. Kelley rejected that argument, finding that each semester in which a student allegedly pays an inflated tuition price can constitute a new antitrust injury.
“Each semester where the school defendants collect tuition and fees at inflated prices, a new antitrust injury occurs,” Kelley wrote. The finding allows claims arising from tuition payments made years after the alleged agreement to proceed, although the issue could be revisited on appeal.
The court dismissed Common App and Scoir, the application platforms involved in the admissions process, from the case. Kelley found no evidence that the companies participated in the alleged pricing arrangement or had a motive to do so.
The remaining claims have not been tested at trial, and the court has not determined that the institutions engaged in unlawful conduct. Dartmouth spokesperson Jana Barnello declined to comment on the active litigation.
The case nevertheless raises questions about the relationship between binding early decision and financial aid. Students who apply through early decision commit to attending an institution before they can compare financial-aid offers from other colleges. That structure can be particularly consequential for students who need to evaluate competing aid packages, and lower-income and first-generation applicants apply through early decision at lower rates.
The plaintiffs’ theory therefore connects the competitive effects of early decision with the institutions’ financial-aid practices: If binding commitments limit students’ ability to compare offers, and institutions simultaneously use those commitments to avoid competing on price, the two practices could have overlapping implications for both antitrust and access to higher education.
Dartmouth’s cost of attendance increased 3% this year to $98,427, following a 5% increase the previous year, according to the College’s Office of Institutional Research. The median annual increase since 2015 has been 3.85%. Whether those increases reflect ordinary cost pressures or conduct that could ultimately be found to constitute collusion remains for the courts to determine.
