The 2016 Ontario budget promises free tuition for low-income families, in efforts to make post-secondary school more accessible and affordable to a higher number of students. This promise of free tuition and larger grants, known as the Ontario Student Grant, will become available to students within Ontario in the 2017-2018 school year.
All students whose households make less than $83,000 per year can expect to see their mortgage-sized student debt become reduced. Under the new Ontario Student Grant, more than 50% of students from families with annual incomes of $83,000 or less will receive non-repayable grants that will cover the cost of a college or university education. In addition, students from families with incomes of $50,000 or less will receive non-repayable grants that will eliminate any provincial student debt, in amounts that will surpass the total of their tuition. The mission statement seems to be that all students will be the same or better off under the previous Ontario Tuition Grant.
The new Ontario Student Grant seems new, but is actually a compilation of existing OSAP grants, funnelled into a single, more widely accessible grant. The OSG repurposes funding from the 30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant recently distributed to students whose household income is less than $160,000. Recent receivers of this grant worry about its continued existence alongside the OSG grant, but OSAP claims that no eligible student will receive an amount any less in a grant than they have recently received from the 30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant. OSAP will find their funding from this grant within the OSG.
The purpose for creating this aid is to make post-secondary education more accessible and affordable to a larger portion of young Ontarians. By encouraging more students to attend post-secondary, the government is preparing more people for the workforce. In the future, a predicted 70% of new jobs will require higher education for training in specialized skills. Resources also show that Ontarians with higher education and specialized skills have better employment prospects, earn higher wages, and have improved health.
What does this all mean to current students? With the 2015-2016 school year finishing up, students are still expected to pay tuition without the OSG. OSAP claims that the program cannot be introduced in the 2016-2017 year because it is a major redesign of the existing system and requires extensive time to make these changes. However, the OSAP application for the 2016-2017 year is nearly finished and will be released in the next few months.
Students will have to continue without the OSG for another school year, but there seems to be no recognition of the situations of those who have graduated, or paid for several years of tuition and accumulated enormous student debt. Although the future seems bright for those entering post-secondary or continuing their studies, to some this change in the budget may seem difficult and inconsiderate. Third-year UofT student Samantha Stewart states that the timing of this program is “…inconvenient. I’ve already gone through three years of paying for my tuition and balancing OSAP, and [I’m] about to go through with my final year of studies. I would really like to see some recognition or consideration about my situation from OSAP.”
Adjusting the budget to encourage the upcoming generation to attend post-secondary school will increase enrolment rates and help create a more effective and purposeful workforce. Although it lacks any consideration for those who have already graduated, the new budget is a step in the right direction towards an affordable higher education, which has become direly needed in today’s competitive world.
But seriously? The government couldn’t have rolled this out slower in order to benefit graduates and students? Has it become my civic duty and responsibility to pay for the next generation of the workforce through the completion of the repayment of my Ontario loans, and under hushed blankets, even though I’m from the same low-income bracket? Is there something I’m not getting here?
I hear you Joel – I’m in the same boat. They weren’t even properly funding mature students a few years ago (I went through university recently with a wife, two children, and a mortgage that was cheaper than an apartment), and they wouldn’t even fund me enough to cover tuition. Now they roll out what would have helped me immensely, and instead I’m $25,000 in debt, at 5.2% interest (which is absurd) paying back a loan that they didn’t seem to want to even give me, as I sourced the other $40,000 that I needed from lines of credit and personal loans. How about an interest break to those of us paying these debts off? Maybe a recalculation of what we would have gotten under these “new” guidelines and taking that off of our current debt? Heck – even just reduce the high interest rate. I’m not even considered low income, I have no idea how you are coping.