My former Law Review colleague (and now smarty-pants law professor) Thom Lambert yesterday posted over at "Truth on the Market" that any collective decision by other elite schools to join Harvard's invitation to end Early Admission raises all sorts of antitrust problems:
Today's NYT reports that Princeton has accepted Harvard's invitation to join it in eliminating early admissions. In addition, the presidents of eleven elite liberal arts colleges (including Swarthmore, Williams, Barnard, and Amherst) have met to discuss, among other things, collectively eliminating their early admission programs and reducing merit-based aid.
Just a friendly reminder, guys:
You are competitors. This is not a joint venture. You are agreeing to reduce competition by eliminating a service option that your customers desire and that would be available but for your agreement not to compete. That's not good.
And as Thom points out in another post:
The Ivies have struggled with antitrust issues before. They used to hold annual meetings to compare financial aid packages offered to admitted students, purportedly for the purpose of ensuring that the aid was distributed equitably. When, in response to a Justice Department challenge, they finally halted that practice, competition for talented admittees increased pretty dramatically.
And more here about collusion among law school administrators.