WELCOME BACK: Judge considers whether MIT broke antitrust laws

With the antitrust trial of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now over, a federal judge is currently considering whether MIT broke antitrust laws by agreeing with Ivy League schools on how to define financial need and dispense financial aid. U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle is expected to make a decision sometime in the next several weeks. If he decides for for MIT, it might lead to a revival of the Overlap Group, a group of 23 private colleges and universities -- including the University -- which had agreements on financial aid policies. A government victory would probably spell its permanent end. Bechtle will have to consider a key question that dominated this summer's two-week trial and has pitted the Justice Department and MIT against each other: Is MIT just another corporation selling a product -- education -- and therefore subject to antitrust laws like any corporation? Or is MIT, like all colleges, a charity whose financial aid practices lie outside the scope of those laws? Thane Scott, MIT's lead lawyer in the case, said during closing arguments in July that giving needy students financial aid is an act of charity by MIT. But Bruce Pearson, the government's chief lawyer in the case, painted a picture of MIT and the other Overlap schools as commercial institutions, which would meet annually to coordinate the "family contribution" paid by students who were accepted at more than one Overlap school. Overlap meetings ended in 1991, after a two-year government investigation of the Ivies and MIT concluded that the agreements were a form of price-fixing. Last spring, the Ivy League schools signed a consent decree agreeing to end the Overlap meetings rather than fight an expensive lawsuit. MIT refused to sign the decree and wound up in court.

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