MIT Presents Overlap Appeal

MIT this week presented its appeal to last year's federal court ruling for-bidding universities to compare individual students' financial aid awards.

The appeal was argued on Tuesday by lawyers for MIT and the Justice Department before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

The entire hearing took about an hour and 15 minutes, according to MIT spokesperson Kenneth Campbell.

MIT and the eight Ivy League schools, including Harvard, were required by the original ruling to cease their policy of consulting each other to set financial aid rates for students applying to more than one of the universities.

The government sued the colleges for antitrust violations in 1991, saying that the institutions conspired to set prices for education and therefore deprived applicants of the benefits of competitive pricing.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania all signed a consent decree forbidding communication for the next 10 years about certain admissions-related matters.

MIT, however, refused to settle. The first trial, which lasted for nine days last July, ended with a verdict for the government.

The Institute's appeal argument has centered on the contention that, as a non-profit organization, it should be exempt from antitrust laws.

"Overlap forced universities to commit themselves to spending whatever it took to bring in the class that was [best] for the school to satisfy their social imperative," Campbell said. "This is consistent with the requirements the federal government imposes for the awarding of financial aid."

The Justice Department position, as argued at the trial by attorney David Seidman, is that MIT's tuition, or whatever fraction can be afforded by a certain student, constitutes a price for education and therefore must conform to antitrust standards.

If MIT were to win the case and the ruling were to stand, the Ivy League schools would be released from their consent degree.

But Campbell said that if MIT loses this round, it will very likely continue on to the Supreme Court. "We've predicted right along that the higher we go the better our chances are," he said.

The matter could also be remanded back to the original judge for a new ruling requiring the use of more testimony from certain sources than was heard during the first trial.

Several organizations have filed briefs on behalf of MIT, citing First Amendment and societal concerns.

Many higher education groups have filed briefs, including the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

The Urban League of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia public schools and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund have also filed briefs supporting MIT.