The five private universities that have yet to settle with students over the alleged fixing of financial aid offerings are asking an Illinois federal court for permission to immediately appeal a ruling that sets the case up for trial.

The University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a motion on Tuesday asking to certify the court's summary judgment ruling from earlier this month for an interlocutory appeal to the Seventh Circuit.

The schools said they wanted to challenge the court's refusal to bar recovery for claims based on tuition payments made before January 2018, four years before the suit was filed, saying a reversal on the statute of limitations would eliminate claims from 80% of the proposed class period.

They also plan to challenge the court's finding that the students have standing to bring their claims, even though a number of the proposed class members had their college expenses paid for by their parents or others.

"Because it is undisputed that six of the eight named plaintiffs did not actually pay their tuition, resolution of this issue in defendants' favor would resolve almost all the named plaintiffs' claims," the motion said. "Favorable resolution of this issue would also likely defeat class certification and facilitate settlement of the few remaining claims, thereby eliminating the need for a costly trial."

The students have already reached more than $300 million in settlements over claims that more than a dozen elite private universities agreed to limit the student aid they provided through the 568 Presidents Group. The group is named for Section 568 of the Improving America's Schools Act, which allowed universities to collaborate on financial aid opportunities as long as they admitted students on a "need-blind basis," or without considering their financial standing.

The group was dissolved in 2022 after Congress refused to extend an exemption from antitrust laws for the collaboration.

The University of Chicago was the first to settle the claims with the students, in a $13.5 million deal, followed by deals with Yale, Emory, Brown, Columbia, and Duke universities totaling $104.5 million. The court most recently approved an $18.5 million settlement between the students and Johns Hopkins University and a $16 million deal with the California Institute of Technology.

U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly denied a summary judgment motion from the remaining schools earlier this month after accepting the students' view of the market, along with evidence suggesting they paid inflated costs.

On the statute of limitations, the judge found that while the schools contend all the facts underlying the claims could have been known years before the students filed the case, a "reasonably diligent" person would be unlikely to detect they had been injured by their financial award.

The motion on Tuesday said there is no reasonable basis to dispute that information explaining the 568 Group's common principles and best practices for financial aid was in the public record for decades, often published or provided by the members themselves.