The Canadian Federation of Students says something stinks after the release of an internally prepared report which says financial aid is working just fine at the University of Toronto.

The recently presented “Report on Student Financial Support 2000-01” was a collection of data collected on students’ financial circumstances for the year 2001.

“It tries to gloss over some quite substantial demographic shifts,” said Joel Duff, Ontario Chair for the Canadian Federation of Students.

Among the report’s findings is that financial aid has risen over the last decade, from $1.5 million to 2200 students in 1991 to nearly $30 million in assistance to more than 16,000 students in 2001.

Critics of the report say the university has, at the very least, used some willful blindness in its preparation.

“All you have to do is peel through the numbers and you’ll see some pretty alarming trends,” said Duff.

One of those trends is lower enrolment among students of colour and students whose families make less than $50,000 per year, he said. “The ethno-cultural diversity of Toronto is actually increasing. Here at the University of Toronto they’re trying to sweep under the carpet the fact that the level of diversity is actually declining.”

Erika Shaker, a senior researcher in the education division of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, sees a similar problem. In examining the relationship between race and accessibility to higher education, “the U of T study refers to two different surveys which ‘differed in methodology and the wording of questions.’ How can accurate comparisons be assessed when the data is invalid?” she wrote.

Shaker also criticized the report’s emphasis on surveying students from the professional programs of Law, Dentistry, Medicine, Management and Pharmacy: “[M]easuring specific faculties is a deliberate move on the part of the university to obscure the number of students who are becoming indebted through higher education, and whose prospects for high-wage employment may not be nearly as great…this also encourages the financial protection of those programs with a high ‘rate of return,’ without regard for programs which are socially relevant but perhaps not as financially solvent.”

Vice-Provost Ian Orchard, who presented the report, was unavailable for comment.

Duff added, “What we’re really doing is just recycling student dollars, because you’re spiking tuition fees, taking that money from some students and delivering it to others.”

Shaker agreed. “In effect, students are subsidizing other students, but the university is the one trumpeting its great student aid program.”