Overview
- Electronic payouts from the $284 million settlement started Monday, July 20, with payments sent via ACH, PayPal, Zelle, and Venmo and paper checks scheduled to arrive later this week.
- The initial distribution covers current and former undergraduates who received need‑based aid at ten schools: Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Rice, and Yale.
- Individual payments will average about $2,000 but the final amounts depend on how many of the roughly 200,000 class members filed timely claims and meet the eligibility rules.
- The cases resolve claims from a 2022 federal suit accusing members of the so‑called 568 Presidents Group of coordinating a shared 'Consensus Methodology' for aid that plaintiffs say limited competition and raised net prices, a claim tied to Section 568 of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994.
- Twelve of the original 17 institutions have settled while five defendants remain in the case, and settlement administrators will ask the court to approve sending any hard‑to‑deliver residual funds to charities that promote access to higher education.