ACADEMIC MAFIA CAUGHT IN PRICE-FIXING SCAM

    In yet another story discreetly glossed over by the Corporate Media, the once-prestigious University of Chicago became the first of 16 'elite' American universities to fork over its share of one the largest class-action lawsuits against Academia Inc in history. The lawsuit focused on a now-defunct shady cartel known as the 568 Presidents Group, which was named for Section 568 of a Clinton-Era Law, the Improving America's School Act of 1994. The ostensible purpose of that Act was to promote diversity and was one of the cornerstones and is one of the cornerstones of the Leftist/Corporate takeovers of Academia.

   Section 568 of the law grew out of an Antitrust Act enforcement begun late in the Reagan Administration---the last presidential administration to take on corruption in Academia. At that time, 57 schools were charged with price-fixing tuition and  financial aid thresholds to suppress competition in enrollment. The new act codified the settlement of the Antitrust Case making it illegal for two or more institutions to award financial aid solely on the basis of need; employ the same standards for determining need; use a common application form; and engage in data-sharing of admissions standards. As is typical of Postmodern Academia, the institutional leadership soon figured out a system for circumventing the law; outsourcing criteria to an 'independent' front-company which they actually controlled. 

    

    Well, scratch a modern academic and usually you find a crook. Imagining that today's Academia will police itself is like turning a city police department over to an organized crime syndicate. The $13.5 million that Chicago was obliged to shell out is, of course, a pittance to the bloated budgets that these enterprises maintain; but if there's one thing that hurts a school administrator's ego worse than anything is being told that they are wrong---and it's worse when it costs them money in any amount. 

    The 'elite' colleges named are: Brown University; Cal Tech; University of Chicago; Columbia University; Cornell; Dartmouth; Duke University; Emory; Georgetown University; MIT; Northwestern; Notre Dame; University of Pennsylvania; Rice; Vanderbilt; and Yale. All of them have significant ties to the US Deep State and are funded in varying degrees by the notorious woke Great Reset front-group, Open Philanthropy. 

   "The lawsuit claimed that these schools had participated in an alleged “price-fixing cartel,” aimed at diminishing competition in the realm of financial aid. This alleged cartel was accused of artificially inflating the net cost of attendance for financially aided students, while favoring wealthier applicants." This is really the most important point that came out of this case. The whole impetus behind lowering the standards to accommodate all of these phony 'diversity' and 'inclusion' programs was a complete scam: it was about lowering standards so that more of the so-called 'elites' had access to them. The result of the whole scam was to marginalize Middle Class non-minorities. The power-base was made more secure by these programs, not less. 

   Unfortunately, when Whacko Left Wing activists get exposed as dupes and chumps they tend to double-down instead of wising-up. They protest and scream even harder for the same policies which entrench the established Class and discriminate against themselves. This is the whole secret behind why the Great Reset Oligarchs all favor 'woke' policies. In private, they laugh in their sleeves over this faux-progressive nonsense; but they promote it because it creates a massive pool of useful idiots (who never learn from their mistakes) for them to draw upon whenever they feel the need to pretend that they have popular support. 

  Much like the recent Court decisions on abortion and affirmative-action, this decision is a minor nuisance to the Oligarchs and won't change their behavior to any significant degree. But to those who actually take notice of the depths of the Swamp, it's a further indication of how pervasive corruption our Culture really is, and the degree to which moneyed interests pull the strings.