Charitable Conspiracy

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.

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.