The University of Toronto is pressing ahead with its plan to change the way it rewards high-scoring students. But student leaders say changing the way scholarships are handed out is just window-dressing on the real problem—high tuition.
“Our position is that we obviously need more money,” said Students’ Administrative Council (SAC) president Alex Kerner. “It fails to solve some deeper problems with access to education.”
U of T president Robert Birgeneau is pushing universities across Ontario to redirect student funding. He wants universities to take into account financial need when they are giving out scholarship money, instead of giving scholarships on the basis of high marks alone.
Ian Orchard, the U of T’s vice-provost, is working with Karel Swift, the university registrar, to produce a paper outlining how merit-based scholarships can be converted to awards that consider a student’s financial need.
“We believe that funding should go to those in need,” Orchard said. He also noted that eight million dollars in scholarships could potentially be redirected.
Orchard stressed that if the reforms proceed as planned, students who perform well would still be rewarded. “You can give merit-based awards, but the value of the awards should be based on financial need,” he added.
Birgeneau sent a letter to Ontario universities urging them to follow U of T’s lead and examine how they can change their scholarship system to give more support to needy students.
In January 2002, Birgeneau plans to meet with his counterparts at other Ontario universities to discuss the issue with them.
The administration believes the plan will help solve the problem of high student debts while avoiding what Orchard called “tuition discounting”—the practice of giving automatic entrance scholarships to students with above average high-school grades.
Many smaller Ontario universities aggressively promote their entrance scholarships as a way of attracting high-quality students to less-prestigious universities. “Some of those [universities] feel it would be hard to participate. They feel they need to offer tuition discounts to attract high-performing students,” Orchard said.
Emily Sadowski, the acting president of the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students at U of T, is dismissive of the plan. She thinks that Birgeneau’s solution won’t target the problem of rising tuition.
“Obviously, there are a lot of students with a lot of need. Unfortunately, I think this approach is the wrong way to go,” Sadowski said.
“They’re not putting any more money into funding,” she added. “What we really need is lower tuition.”
Kerner agrees, saying that what is needed is a tuition freeze—one of his campaign planks.
“It’s kind of a roundabout way of failing to deal with the issues of tuition,” Kerner said, mentioning student loan reform as another problem that Birgeneau’s plan does not address.
SAC’s University Affairs director Agata Durkalec will be holding a meeting of the university affairs commission in January to decide SAC’s formal response to Birgeneau’s proposal.
