In what's being pitched as a bipartisan swing at the elite ramparts of education, a group of Republican lawmakers are setting their sights on the Ivy League. The high brow constellation of universities—is it drawing the ire of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Scott Fitzgerald, and Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights Mike Lee. This group has sent a direct message asking for documents that might shed light on possible tuition price collusion among these high-flying institutions.
The red flag for these lawmakers seems to be a pattern that could suggest synchronous tuition hikes. What precisely got their wheels turning hasn't been publicly divulged, but they appear to strongly believe enough evidence exists to straight-up demand Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University for documents, according to a press release from the House Judiciary Committee. The communiqué pointedly notes the concern over "coordinated practices" and alleged collusion, which may run afoul of the Sherman Act—an antitrust law designed to prohibit monopolistic business practices.
The suspicions aren't out of the blue. These institutions previously possessed an exemption from antitrust laws, giving them a leeway not afforded to many. However, the exemption is no more, and the implication by these congressmen is perhaps they continue to operate as if it were. Such a setup, they argue, is contrary to the spirit of healthy competition and fairness in the higher education market.
