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Dartmouth, Northwestern, Rice and Vanderbilt universities have agreed to pay a combined $166 million to resolve claims that they favored wealthy student applicants, pushing total settlements in a federal antitrust lawsuit over college financial aid practices to $284 million.
Lawyers for a proposed class of hundreds of thousands of current and former U.S. students disclosed the latest settlements in a filing. late Friday in Chicago federal court.
The 2022 lawsuit said 17 prominent colleges and universities violated U.S. antitrust law by violating a pledge not to consider students' finances in making admissions decisions, giving wealthy students an edge.
Dartmouth and Rice said they would each pay $33.75 million. Northwestern agreed to pay $43.5 million, and Vanderbilt will pay $55 million.
Brown, Yale and Columbia universities earlier agreed to pay a combined $62 million to resolve claims against them.