Washington — The House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill on Wednesday that would make permanent a law that allows colleges to share limited amounts of information about their approaches to awarding student aid.

The law, which is set to expire on September 30, was enacted in 1992, after the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against 23 elite institutions, known as the “Overlap Group,” that had met annually to determine aid awards for every student admitted to more than one of them.

The law exempts colleges from some antitrust provisions, enabling them to use a common method for assessing a family’s financial need, as long as they make need-blind admissions. The House passed a similar bill last year, but it was not taken up in the Senate.

Proponents of the antitrust exemption argue that developing common aid practices reduces variation among award packages offered to the same students and thereby allows them to make decisions about where to enroll based on factors other than cost. But opponents say that the exemption reduces competition among institutions and could force all students to pay more for college.

A 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office found “virtually no difference” in the amounts that students and their families were expected to pay at institutions that used a consensus approach to awarding aid and at similar institutions that made aid awards on their own. —Kelly Field