Rice University is actually not the only school with this problem. Students were overcharged by massive amounts.
ABC News in Texas reports:
Rice University sets aside $33 million to settle financial-aid lawsuitRice University has set aside $33.75 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed against 17 prestigious private universities across the country accused of illegally running a scheme that limited the amount of financial aid given to students, according to the school’s financial statements for last year.The Houston-based university’s financial statement for last fiscal year, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, says the school will use the money to settle “a class action lawsuit in which it had been named a co-defendant along with sixteen other universities.”Court records related to the case reviewed Friday do not show a settlement agreement has been reached yet. Rice declined to comment on the lawsuit and the financial statement. The plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment Friday.Nine former students who attended some of the universities filed a lawsuit in January 2022 claiming that the school’s financial aid and admission practices inflated the price of attendance. As a result, more than 200,000 students receiving financial aid were overcharged hundreds of millions of dollars, according to court documents. The U.S. The Justice Department has backed the lawsuit.The burden “falls in particular on low- and middle-income families struggling to afford the cost of a university education and to achieve success for their children,” the lawsuit says.The institutions named as defendants in the lawsuit are Rice, Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY