Colleges could free up more money for need-based aid if they could work together to end the bidding wars for high-achieving, low-need students, says a white paper out this morning.

The paper, published by the Institute for College Access and Success, calls on Congress to expand a law that allows colleges to exchange limited amounts of information about their approaches to awarding student aid.

That 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 say they make need-blind admissions. The law 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.

Currently, only 27 elite colleges take advantage of the exemption. The paper speculates that this may be in part because some colleges are reluctant to declare themselves need-blind. It argues that if Congress made it easier for colleges to qualify, or carved out additional temporary exemptions, then colleges could work together to shift their resources from merit-based to need-based aid, without worrying about losing their competitive advantage. —Kelly Field