House Republicans subpoena Brown University and Penn in Ivy League antitrust probe

The House Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas Tuesday to Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, demanding additional documents from the schools as part of an ongoing probe into alleged antitrust violations in Ivy League tuition and financial aid policies.

The two subpoenas mirrored one that was issued by the committee last week to Harvard University.

Brown, Penn and Harvard are among a group of eight Ivy League universities that all received letters from the committee In April, demanding a huge tranche of documents and records.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the other five schools that had received demands would also be issued subpoenas. They are Dartmouth University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University and Yale University.

The committee says it is investigating whether the Ivy League universities collectively raised their tuition rates in what amounted to a kind of price-fixing.

It is also weighing whether the schools used their knowledge of applicants’ personal financial situations to inform tuition aid packages that maximized how much the schools collected. The committee described this practice as tantamount to price discrimination.

In Tuesday’s letters, committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and subcommittee chair Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin wrote that both Brown’s and Penn’s responses to the original document requests in April had been “inadequate.”

Those requests laid out 11 topics on which the committee wanted all records and emails and internal documents from the schools dating back six years.

A spokesperson for Brown told CNBC the university has “consistently cooperated” with the congressional investigation.

“While the House Committee’s July 1 subpoena was unnecessary given our voluntary compliance,” the spokesperson said, “We fully recognize the committee’s oversight authority and will continue to provide the committee with information it has requested.”

Likewise, Penn has “promptly and consistently” engaged with the committee’s requests, a spokesperson told CNBC. As part of this engagement, the school has provided more than 8,000 pages of documents to Congress so far.

Brown and Penn have until July 22 to comply with the subpoenas. Harvard was given until July 17.

According to the committee, the university subpoenas and the documents they compel will inform “potential legislative reforms” Congress is considering.

These include “whether existing civil and criminal penalties and current antitrust law enforcement efforts are sufficient to deter anticompetitive practices among higher education institutions.”