Student funding has not kept up with increased costs for tuition, rent, incidental fees, books and transportation. Increases in tuition fees have been met by increases in student loan limits, not grants.
Shamefully, Canada is only one of two Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries without a national system of student grants. The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) among other groups, has advocated the development of such a system for a number of years.
Grants allow education to remain affordable, loans allow students to accumulate massive levels of debt. With the rising cost of education, students have put pressure on both the government and university to deal with the student funding crisis.
In 1998, U of T responded by making the following commitment: “No student admitted to a program at the university should be unable to enter or complete the program due to lack of financial means.”
In 2000, the university struck a task force on graduate student financial support. Graduate students won guaranteed funding packages for Ph.D. students and some masters students of $12,000 plus tuition for up to five years. There is still work to be done, as currently it is not available to half the graduate students, including OISE students. With tuition increases of 472% for Ph.D. students through the 1990s, this is problematic.
Undergraduate students do not have guaranteed funding packages. Their tuition fees have increased 125% in the past 10 years.
Part-time students face their own dilemmas, including their inability to get OSAP. They accumulate interest on their student debt while studying. This is particularly problematic, as part-time enrolment numbers show this affects approximately 10,000 students annually.
Two years after graduation, the amount owed to student loan programs had increased by 69% for university students compared to 1990 graduates and 1995 graduates. Lack of grants has led to increases in average student debt upon graduation, rising $8,000 in 1990 to $25,000 today.
Fear of debt can prevent bright students from low-income families from applying to post-secondary institutions. A Statistics Canada report released in Dec. 2001 highlighted the very low university participation rates of students from low-income families.
U of T’s National Report 2001 states, “Today’s graduate students face a heavy financial burden.” As one student put it, “Paying off a student loan is like making payments on a house. Only there’s no house.”
U of T’s governors tell us students needn’t worry about debt because their earning potential with a degree is so high. But 25% of Canadian workers with a post-secondary degree report they are overqualified and underpaid for their jobs.
Graduates are losing the choice to work for non-profit, social justice and faith groups who cannot compete with corporate salaries. Students are more than mere economic units, and education is about more than getting a high-paid job to pay off debt.
Support is growing for the creation of a national needs-based grants program to replace the current Canada Student Loan Program. President Birgeneau is lobbying to move towards primarily needs-based scholarships, saying that “students should attend the university that best meets their educational goals, not the one that appears to be most advantageous financially.”
