Bowdoin College is one of 32 higher education institutions named in a class-action lawsuit that accuses the schools of conspiring to use early admissions practices to inflate tuition costs.

Early decision admissions — offered mostly by selective, elite colleges — allow students to apply to and hear back from schools before the traditional application deadline. But the decision is binding, meaning that they must accept an offer if admitted and withdraw all of their other applications.

The suit, filed Friday in Massachusetts federal court, claims that early admissions practices drive up the cost of education and prevent students from comparing financial aid offers, and names dozens of elite institutions it claims conspire to reduce price competition, including many Ivy League schools, as well as Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Wesleyan University and Bowdoin, the small liberal arts college in Brunswick. The case is being brought by four current and former college students who say they were disadvantaged by early decision.

The process is appealing to students because it allows them to resolve their college application early — and, traditionally, acceptance rates are higher in the early round of admissions. For Bowdoin’s incoming Class of 2029, the early decision acceptance rate was 14.8%, while the overall acceptance rate was just 6.8%, a historic low according to reporting from the Bowdoin Orient.

But the practice is also controversial. Advocates say early admissions discriminate against low-income students, and the lawsuit contends that students are locked into a commitment before knowing their financial aid offer, and that colleges can offer less financial aid because they don’t need to compete with other schools for the students.

“Early decision is enforced by mutual agreement between would-be competitors not to compete for students offered admission through early decision at other schools,” the lawsuit reads. “The defendant schools have mutually agreed not to compete for students accepted through early decision, which both raises prices for tuition and other services and entrenches a system widely acknowledged to be unfair and harmful.”

Doug Cook, Bowdoin’s director of communications, said in an emailed statement Wednesday: “We are aware of the lawsuit and we stand by our admission practices.”

Maine’s two other elite liberal arts colleges, Colby College in Waterville and Bates College in Lewiston, offer early decision admissions but were not named in the lawsuit, which only includes members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an organization of highly selective, private liberal arts colleges and universities that share college affordability data. The suit also names the consortium itself and two college application platforms.

The lawsuit aims to end the practice of binding early decision admissions, and seeks damages for a class of students who it says would have paid less for college if not for early decision.

Colleges rely on early admissions to lock in students, some more than others. In 2021, Bates admitted 81% of its incoming class early, and it continues to be one of the biggest users of the practice, according to a 2022 report from Education Reform Now. Bates’s acceptance rate in 2022, the outlet reported, was 47% for early decision applicants but just 14% overall.

James Murphy, the researcher behind that report, said his work has shown that students from expensive private high schools, wealthy international students and students from the highest-income ZIP codes use early decision at much higher rates.

“So we know, in terms of usage, the people who are seeing the benefits of early decision are almost certainly the students who already have the most advantages,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

But Murphy is ambivalent about early decision admissions as a whole. He said about 200 colleges rely on it to satisfy their admissions priorities like full-pay students and athletes, but also low-income students. There just isn’t data on what percentage of students admitted early fall into that category.

“It does not have to be an instrument for evil and for unfairness,” he said. “But we don’t know who’s using it or in what way.”

He said there’s lots of misinformation about the financial risks of applying early decision. If a student is admitted early but can’t afford it, he said, they can pull out. But he said many families just don’t know that, and that broader awareness of the practice as a whole could be a step toward making it more equitable.

Murphy also said the lawsuit contains some “wrong-headed” assumptions about the financial aid process, and he doesn’t believe colleges are actually colluding on admissions. However, he did say that one practice he would like to see end is schools admitting the majority of their students through early decision.

“Once more than half of your class is being enrolled through early decision, you’re much more likely to put students who are not coming from the wealthiest families, not hiring educational consultants, at an incredible disadvantage,” he said.