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- <text id=92TT2042>
- <title>
- Sep. 14, 1992: Charitable Conspiracy
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Sep. 14, 1992 The Hillary Factor
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 25
- SOCIETY
- Charitable Conspiracy
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A judge finds M.I.T. and the Ivy League guilty of price fixing
- </p>
- <p> For more than 30 years the eight Ivy League colleges and
- M.I.T., as well as dozens of other private institutions, mostly
- in the Northeast, agreed that they would not try to outbid one
- another for talented students who needed financial assistance.
- Each spring this so-called Overlap Group, led by M.I.T. and the
- Ivies (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard,
- Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale), would share information about
- needy students accepted by more than one of the member schools,
- working out a standard financial-aid package. Last year the
- Justice Department charged that this practice violated U.S.
- antitrust laws by suppressing competition among the schools.
- Almost all members of the group signed consent decrees agreeing
- to stop the practice. Only M.I.T. fought back. Last week Chief
- U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle in Philadelphia barred M.I.T.
- from "any combination or conspiracy" with other colleges in
- setting education prices.
- </p>
- <p> Said Charles James, the Justice Department's lawyer:
- "Students and their families are entitled to the full benefits
- of price competition when they pick a college." But M.I.T.
- President Charles Vest warned that the decision would make it
- harder for colleges to admit students without regard to
- financial need and "effectively erode the freedom of opportunity
- to get a college education, regardless of income." The decision,
- which M.I.T. has vowed to appeal, could encourage lawsuits by
- students denied financial aid at any of the nine schools.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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