'Talent Greatly Welcomed' Prestigious Universities Promoting, Selectively Hiring by Family Background Leading to Settlement Bombshell

Student Organization Involved in Class Action Lawsuit

Major prestigious universities in the United States have agreed to pay a settlement exceeding 130 billion won. This is due to their failure to keep the promise of not considering applicants' financial capabilities during the admissions process.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 24th (local time) that five universities?Yale University, Columbia University, Brown University, Duke University, and Emory University?have agreed to pay a total of $104.5 million (approximately 139.1 billion won) to the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit. These five universities are prestigious institutions ranked at the top in various college rankings. However, they recently became embroiled in a class-action lawsuit over controversies surrounding their scholarship admissions systems.

Yale University, USA
Photo by Yale University

Many U.S. universities provide scholarships to students who cannot afford tuition fees. To receive a university scholarship, applicants must first disclose during the application process that they lack the financial means to pay tuition.

The problem lies in the fact that there were numerous cases where applicants identified as 'financially disadvantaged' were rejected. The reason given was that increasing the acceptance rate of scholarship recipients negatively impacts the school's finances. Although U.S. universities have promoted that 'an applicant's inability to pay tuition does not affect admission decisions,' it has been reported that this was not the reality.

If a university discriminates based on an applicant's financial ability during the admissions process, it violates U.S. federal law. Accordingly, a student organization in the U.S. filed lawsuits against a total of 17 universities, including the five mentioned above, as well as Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Georgetown University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The plaintiffs argue that because universities considered applicants' financial situations, students were deprived of opportunities to receive education at a lower cost. However, the universities maintain that although they agreed to pay the settlement, there was no illegality in the selection process.

In the case of Brown University, the reason for agreeing to pay the settlement was described as "a decision to dedicate resources to supporting students outside of the lawsuit."