Starting next year, Lakehead University will offer free tuition to undergrads who enter with a 95 per cent average and who maintain an 85 per cent average in upper years. Robert Perrier, manager for undergraduate recruitment at Lakehead, said the scholarships are a move to attract top students from all over Canada to northwestern Ontario’s only university.
Lakehead’s current student body was not exactly jubilant. Calling the initiative “spearhead recruitment” for “garnishing attention in making people interested,” Richard Longton, president of the Lakehead University Students’ Union, said the university is shortchanging current students who will not benefit from this decision in any way.
University of Toronto Students’ Union VP external Dave Scrivener sees things differently. Scrivener said he’d like to see similar policies at other universities. “It’s great to see a university accept that access to post-secondary education needs to be centred on a system of merit, and not money,” he says.
