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House and Senate Judiciary Leaders Question Use of Student Data in Tuition Algorithms

By  |  October 1, 2025

Congressional leaders are intensifying scrutiny of how colleges set tuition prices, raising alarms that the use of shared algorithms may violate antitrust laws. On Wednesday, the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent letters to consulting firms EAB and Ruffalo Noel Levitz, as well as to the College Board, Oracle, and Ellucian, requesting detailed information about software tools used to shape financial aid offers.

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    According to the New York Times, lawmakers questioned whether the widespread reliance on consultants and their pricing models risks illegal coordination among schools. The letters, signed by Representatives Jim Jordan and Scott Fitzgerald and Senators Charles Grassley and Mike Lee, warned that “colleges that agree to use a common pricing formula or algorithm, or knowingly do so through a third-party company, are likely violating the antitrust laws.”

    The inquiry stems from reporting in the Times that revealed an EAB executive once described the company’s methods as “a form of arbitrage” and compared its financial strategies to activity in the financial markets. EAB claims to use up to 200 variables across data from more than 350 clients, while Ruffalo Noel Levitz draws from a client base of nearly 2,000 institutions. Per the New York Times, these firms supply colleges with detailed predictive models that influence both recruitment and financial aid distribution.

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    The letters demand descriptions of each product and service, the data used to train algorithms, and the list of higher education institutions that rely on them. Lawmakers stressed that antitrust violations could occur even without direct conversations between competitors if schools delegate pricing decisions to shared software.

    Read more: Judge Dismisses Tuition Collusion Case Against 40 Elite US Universities

    Responses have been limited so far. EAB stated it was still reviewing the letter, while Ruffalo Noel Levitz offered no immediate comment. The College Board, which licenses the CSS Profile tool used by colleges for need-based aid, and Ellucian both acknowledged receipt and said they were assessing the request. Oracle declined to comment.

    Concerns about collusion in higher education pricing are not new. Earlier this year, the same group of lawmakers demanded records from Ivy League institutions, citing “apparent collusion to raise tuition prices.” According to the New York Times, the scope of that earlier probe extended to communications involving the Common App, U.S. News rankings, and early decision policies.

    Federal regulators have also stepped in before. In 2019, the Justice Department reached an antitrust settlement with the National Association for College Admission Counseling, ending restrictions that barred schools from recruiting students who had already committed elsewhere. Since then, universities have engaged in increasingly aggressive discounting practices to win over admitted students.

    Source: The New York Times