Congressional Republicans announce probe of Penn for tuition and financial aid decisions

Republican leaders in Congress on Thursday announced an investigation of the University of Pennsylvania and the other seven Ivy League private universities for alleged collusion in raising tuition rates and discrimination in financial aid decisions.

The move comes amid the Trump administration’s targeting of universities by withholding billions of dollars in federal funding while accusing elite institutions of antisemitism and many others of civil rights violations for “race-exclusionary practices,” among other complaints.

In March, the Trump administration withheld $175 million in funding to Penn for having allowed transgender athlete Lia Thomas to compete on its women’s swimming team in 2022.

Then the university received stop-work orders on federally funded research, totaling another $175 million.

Penn is already mired in a lawsuit accusing elite universities of forming a “price-fixing cartel” to avoid paying financial aid, and giving preference to applicants from wealthy families while claiming to be need-blind.

In a letter dated April 8, Larry Jameson, Penn’s president, was asked to provide documents and communications from the beginning of 2019 to the present and deliver them to the Congressional investigators by 5 p.m. April 22.

In a statement Thursday evening, a Penn spokesperson said: “We have received the letter and are carefully reviewing it. We will cooperate with their information requests.”

The letter is signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust.

“We are particularly concerned that Ivy League member institutions appear to collectively raise tuition prices while engaging in price discrimination by offering selective financial aid packages to maximize profit,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Jameson.

Penn has been under fire since pro-Palestinian protests nationwide consumed campuses, including Penn.

The university’s former president, Liz Magill, resigned following a bipartisan backlash over her congressional testimony on the handling of antisemitism complaints.

After President Donald Trump took office and launched a campaign against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies, Penn began removing DEI websites.

Penn has received around $1 billion annually in federal funding, so the $175 million withheld for allowing a transgender athlete to compete and the stop-work orders for another $175 million in research funding represent a 35% loss.

In the lawsuit against Penn and 16 other private universities, Penn and five other institutions have yet to settle, the Daily Pennsylvanian has reported. The remaining defendants could be responsible for approximately $2 billion in damages if they lose the antitrust lawsuit.