Congress Extends College Anti-trust Protections

The president has signed a bill (P.L. 110-327) to extend, for seven more years, current anti-trust protections to need-blind colleges that wish to confer on certain student aid procedures. Without new legislation, the current law would have expired on September 30.

The new bill is essentially an extension of the law passed seven years ago, clarifying that it is not an anti-trust violation for schools that are need-blind in the admissions process to meet collaboratively to discuss ways to assess need. A small set of colleges and universities have used this exemption during the past decade to develop certain need analysis tools for assessing how institutional aid is to be awarded. This extension will allow those schools to continue those conversations. The law, like its predecessor, does not allow colleges to discuss individual student awards.

For more information, please contact:
Sarah Flanagan