Host: The situation that Ontario was facing wasn't sustainable any longer. That was Premier Doug Ford talking about post-secondary education and why the government said it had to make changes. Here's what those changes look like. The Tories are lifting the tuition freeze that's been in place since 2019. Colleges and universities will now be able to raise fees 2% a year for three years. And the Ontario Student Assistance Program, better known as OSAP, is changing too. It used to be mostly grants. Now it'll be mostly loans. The province says the current system wasn't sustainable. Well, higher tuition fees make a difference for colleges and universities facing a funding crunch, and students really afford more debt. We dig into what the future looks like for higher education in Ontario. Welcome to The Rundown.

Colleges and universities have been ringing alarm bells about a lack of funding. Many students face challenges paying for an education.

Now, Premier Doug Ford has announced an end to Ontario's tuition freeze and fewer OSAP grants. But more loans. Daniel Corral is an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and Noah Morris is the president of JMM Strategies, Inc. and an instructor at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. How are you guys doing? All right, Daniel, I'm going to start with you. What was your reaction to Minister Nolan Quinn's changes to Ontario's post-secondary funding just last month?

Yeah, so there were a lot of reactions. So I think first and foremost, you see the first two points of the policy change, the first one being the lift of the tuition freeze, right. So we've had the tuition freeze for about six years before that there was a tuition reduction. And so from my perspective, I thought that was a good thing, given the sort of the state of the finances among post-secondary institutions in Ontario. The other piece of that was the $6.4 billion injection in funding, which is also much needed. But then you scroll down to the last point and then you see this really, really drastic change in in OSAP. Right. Going from majority grants and majority loans and. 8515 split to a 7525. On average. Right. So so yeah. So going from from that majority grant majority loan system was really worrisome. Right. And immediately you think of how is this going to impact low income students, middle income students who really end up relying on OSAP as their lifeline, right, to attend higher education. So that was my initial reaction.

My initial reaction was that it was really important to fund the sector. So the government reduced grants to the sector in 201819. I was the ADM at the time and and reduced tuition 10%. So there was a major problem. So I was very pleased and along with the whole sector, that the government was putting money into post-secondary. To be honest with you, I was quite horrified by how they funded it. So it needed to be funded. But funding 50 or 60% of it with savings from OSAP, that goes to the most vulnerable students in Ontario. The impact of that is going to be quite devastating on access, because there are many families at the lower end of the economic scale. Their only way to get into post-secondary was OSAP, and the government had had reduced it from the previous government, which we're going to talk about. So that part of it was very, very unfortunate.

What's at risk? So there are a few things at risk, right. I think what what Noah was mentioning in terms of of access, right. Students, particularly those from the most economically disadvantaged backgrounds, really rely on, on OSAP. Right. So that's, that's, that's shifting the structure of OSAP. So they're going to be reliant more on, on loans as a result of it. Right. And that can have huge impacts in terms of what those student loan burdens can look like once they actually depart or graduate the institution. Right. And so having that additional debt is going to have pretty drastic impacts in terms of home ownership. Other really important milestones and key things that people want to achieve once they leave post-secondary education, right. And this is mostly for, for, you know, quote unquote traditional students. Right. But also huge impacts on, on, you know, mature students and other student populations, marginalised student populations as well.

How do you access education while you're trying to make ends meet, like you mentioned? Like a lot of these students will perhaps have to be working. I believe there is some. You do get penalised a little bit for working. There's income there when you're, you know, when you're giving all your documents in. How do you make those ends meet?

It's a balancing act, right. So so, you know, you made reference to a lot of really technical aspects of the OSAP system in terms of if you work up to a certain amount, it doesn't affect your OSAP. But if you work up to, you know, past that threshold, then that does impact it, right? So that's kind of way a lot on on students in terms of how they're managing their employment, how much they're working, where they're working. Right. That can have a huge impact. Or are they working on on campus jobs on, you know, perhaps jobs that, that aren't, you know, on campus or through other means. Right. And so having to balance all those things, in addition to the academic commitments, working more also removes your ability to participate in co-curricular activities, which we know are highly related, correlated to academic success and degree completion. So this is just, you know, something that gets thrown into the middle and students have to figure out how to respond to it. And it's quite unfortunate.

Noah, take us back before the 2019 tuition freeze. How has the provincial financial aid evolved since then?

So it's it's in there were three phases to it. So I became the director of OSAP in 2007. So the government had just announced reaching higher and put a whole bunch of money into student aid. And at that point, it was a confused system in that the government reduced your loans down to $7,000 at the end of your first year. There were tax credits. It was very confused. So that was the first phase, and it was not a very generous system. Over the 20 tens, 2012 to 2017, it became more generous and we made it more accessible. And we work with the government on something called free tuition in 201617. And that really was transformational and that it took all the tax credits, it took all the loan remission, and it said, we're going to create one upfront grant to create free tuition. And there were it was transformational in that it didn't cost the government any more money, but it incredibly improved access. In that first year, 201718, we had a 28% increase in the number of poor students going to post-secondary. Wow. The access was was was quite incredible. When the government came in in 2018, it effectively brought erased all that and brought the system back to the way it was in 2015. And this latest announcement brings back, brings it back right to the Mike Harris years when there were no loans, when there were no grants at all. And the vast majority of grants now are now federal. So it's it's it's going to have a huge impact on access.

Can we help understand if we're in terms of numbers, what does this look like for a student who is looking to get loans to help go through university? What could they be paying by the end of the year in terms of.

So a typical a typical tuition at university is about $8,000 living costs, depending on whether they're living at home or not, is another 6 or $7,000. And fees is obviously included. So the cost is around 17 or $18,000 around. That's university OSAP generally in it's free tuition phase provided about 16 or $17,000. 70% of that was non-repayable at its height in 2018. It the maximum grants for about 6 or $7,000, and now the maximum grants, mostly federal, are in the 3 or $4,000. So the amount of debt students are going to be taking on, which was capped at $7,000 for many, many years, maybe as high as 1213, $15,000 per year.

And and access when, when when parents are working with students, they think about how much is out of pocket and how much are they going to have to pay back. All right. We reached out to the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security. We got a statement. This is a statement from Minister Quinn's press secretary. It reads in part, the federal government's decision to remove grant eligibility from students at private career colleges, coupled with increased program uptake in recent years, has put billions of dollars of pressure on the Ontario Student Assistance Program OSAP to restore sustainability to OSAP and ensure its availability for future generations. Our government is aligning our student financial support framework with other jurisdictions across Canada. The Enhanced Student Access Guarantee will ensure that Ontario students with financial need receive enough aid to cover tuition, books and mandatory fees to offset the modest tuition increase. If OSAP funding does not cover these costs, the institution provides additional support. Noah, I'll come back to you. I want to focus on sort of that. The line there about aligning the province with financial support and other Canadian jurisdictions. How does OSAP compare when we look across the country?

So if you look at OSAP pre-2000, around 201718, Ontario was head and shoulders above every other province in terms of the support it provided. Non-repayable 2000 1819 when the change was was made, Ontario was in the kind of of the middle of the pack okay with. Basically in the middle of the pack it now it will be the lowest of all the of all the provinces are very, very close to it. Quebec even Alberta just announced increases to student aid. Manitoba just increases announced increases. Those are very generous provinces. We we are sitting with least generous provinces, which are mostly in the Maritimes where the tuition is quite low. So vis a vis other provinces, Ontario is not looking very good. And we still have the highest among the highest tuition. Even with the freeze for the last eight years, we still have among the highest tuition in Canada.

Danielle, I'll get your take on that as well. Yeah. I think what this is really showing is that Ontario was a leader in terms of providing post-secondary access, right? It was giving students the opportunity, particularly those from from low income backgrounds, right, to access higher education and to say that you want to get in line with other provinces, like I totally I recognize the logic behind that. Like you need to be sustainable if you want to provide this for future generations. Like that's that does take a, you know, that's something really important to consider. But for this to be sort of such a drastic change overnight versus like a tuition framework, right, that gets implemented over X number of years. You know, there could have been other ratios presented in terms of keeping these these very generous ratios for low income students or middle income students and changing, you know, the criteria for other students, right. But instead, this was a very blanket policy that we know is going to impact the lowest income students the most.

Your take on that is in terms of structuring OSAP versus. Yeah, the interesting thing about tuition and OSAP, it's a very interesting interaction. If you go to the 2010 system, the vast majority of tuition was being paid by government and the free tuition era, all of the tuition was being paid by government for students under 60, 70, $80,000. So when the government reduced tuition 10%, the only people that benefited were rich kids. So that is the it's a bit of a dichotomy. Like that's not who we're supposed to benefit, right? The impact of sustained reduced tuition and now it's only increasing 2%, is just a direct impact on the institutions who are unable to fund it. So the the reduction in tuition does not help students. It didn't help students during that period. And the increase in tuition at 2%, it's not going to have a major impact on access. It's the actual assistance they're getting under the student assistance program that will have the biggest impact.

All right, Daniel, there's a lot of students right now in this province who are in high school who are probably getting their acceptance letters. They're getting excited right now about what prospects, what their prospects will look like. Navigating the financial aid system is quite complex. There's a lot of paperwork involved. I remember it when I had to do it. Do we understand how this might play out? I know this is early with its announcement, but for the people who are getting it now, you know, September is just down the corner. Yeah. No, there's a lot there's a lot uncertainty on it. Right. So the announcement was made like three weeks ago. And you know, there there are protests, right? Like students are really upset by this policy decisions and they're making their voices heard. They're mobilising. There's a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety around it. So students don't don't don't really know what that's going to look like. If you try to get a sense as to what your aid is going to look like based on the current aid estimator, even then, they're giving you ballpark numbers that may not be accurate. Right. And so for a lot of students right now, there's a lot of uncertainty. The other the other thing I will say is in terms of the financial aid system, it's super complex, right? So students have to be able to get information from their from their from their families, right? From the amount of assets that, that they may have. Right. So having to navigate all these things are it's it's basically a gauntlet. Right? There's a lot of steps that need to be taken into place. And so what I would encourage students to, to really take ownership of is connecting with university financial aid advisors and administrators. Right. To get a sense as to like, okay, I've been accepted, I get an aid package, but what is this going to mean? Right? What other opportunities are out there from the institution side of things? Because of course, you know, OSAP is there providing federal and provincial support, right? But there's also the institution side that can help bridge this gap. Right. But of course, there's a lot of variability in terms of the resources that institutions have.

All right. I want to talk about Premier Doug Ford's comments that he had made that sparked some criticism. Humber Polytechnic, formerly known as Humber College, is offering voluntary exit packages to its staff to sort of deal with the mounting financial pressure. Now, in response, Premier Ford told them to run it like a business should. Colleges take that advice?

No. Why not? Colleges were created in Ontario, mostly in 1967. They created most of them to be public institutions, to provide a level of mostly technical education and accessible technical education. That's what the tuition is, 3200. It's a public service for them to provide a public institution that that is affordable and that you can go to, and it's in your community and it has a public it serves the public in terms of it has an educational mandate that is not a private business. It shouldn't be run inefficiently. But a private college is not a private business because there are private colleges that are private businesses, and they're run like private businesses.

In the same breath, Premier Ford said that no one has invested more money into colleges and universities than his government. I'm going to gather that you have some thoughts on that. I would suggest, if you look at the amount of money going to universities and colleges in provincial government grants, they were not increased in any year since 2019. This latest announcement is a very strong announcement in terms of supporting the sector, $6.4 billion, a lot of money reaching higher in 2006, 2005, six was $6.4 billion of 2005 money. That was that was a real investment. This is a real strong investment, but it's unfortunate. It's being funded on the backs of students who won't be able to get access to those institutions.

All right. Let's talk solutions. Aside from money, is there anything that would fix this problem? I think when we talk about money, sometimes we say throwing money can sort of. That's all we need. Perhaps maybe that is the case in terms of the institutions and for the students who need it. But is there something else that we should be looking at?

I will double down and say that the province, supporting colleges and universities is always a good, good approach to it. So I want to highlight that. I don't know if there's a, you know, a panacea to this, right, because it is a really financing higher education is a really complex topic. Just ask my my students who I, you know, I teach every Monday night. But in terms of of this particular policy, I think going back to thinking about different grant and loan ratios could be, you know, a viable solution. We think about making Ontario similar to other provinces. Ontario could also get rid of the interest on on their on their student loans.

Which starts the second they done school. Yep. Exactly right. So they don't have to pay for that six months. Once they leave leave college or university. Right. But the interest starts there. Right. So that could be another way to sort of limit the damage that this policy is, is causing.

You're not letting I can't use money, right? Yes. Money aside. Yes. Institutions can be incentivized or required to provide more student aid from the institution. That's a huge one. Another big one is repayment assistance. So once you leave school, there's a repayment assistance program that could be made more generous. So you're not in a bind in terms of and that you can set that at an income level, you know, 50, 60, $70,000 before you actually have to pay, which is kind of a British model. It's the model we have here. So there's things you could do at the back end to reduce the impact of loans, but without more money, it's a big problem.

Danny, what are the future repercussions of an under-educated generation? Yeah, there's a lot of repercussions, right? I think the research shows, you know, great benefits to education. Right. And in terms of economic benefits, but also social and political benefits, right. A healthier, healthier community, healthier society, more politically involved community, more politically involved society. And so the flip side of that, if we have less students, you know, considering higher education as a result of this policy change, that's worrisome, right, that that can put a real strain on, on us, you know, as a, as a community. So, so that's that's the first thing that that comes to mind here. But then going back to what does, you know, what do greater loan burdens look like currently. Right. Like we you know, we're in Toronto right now. Things are incredibly expensive. And so knowing that you graduate from your institution with your degree, your diploma, your credential, and now you have this looming student loan debt over you that that impacts your could impact your daily decisions, right. And also home ownership, starting a family, all these types of things right. Not to say that home ownership is in reach for for many of us. Right. But but it could certainly delay it. You know, I think about my own experience. I did my, my, my education in the US. And so I graduated with a significant amount of student loans. And so knowing how that impacted me, I can imagine, you know, that being that playing out here in Ontario.

All right, gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there. Noah. Danny, really appreciate your insights on this. Thank you. Thanks. For students across Ontario. These changes aren't theoretical. They're worried about what Ontario's new policies will mean for their education and its price tag. We look at how tuition hikes and the prospect of more debt will affect the decisions they make. Cyrielle Ngeleka is chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario, and she joins me in studio. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me. Yes. Of course. Now you've had a busy day yesterday. You and your colleagues were protesting at Queen's Park against the province's recent change to post-secondary funding. Help us understand. What concerns do you have?

Of course, the main concern is affordability. When we are seeing a shift in the OSAP program, specifically when we're seeing grants being essentially diminished in that program and OSAP becoming a more loans based program, students are worried about how they're going to study next semester, right? As a student that's almost going to graduate, I'm reconsidering whether graduate studies is the path that I want to take. And for many students who are about to enter the post-secondary education sector are wondering how they're even going to pay for education to begin with. Right.

Tell us you're in third year, third or fourth year at York University? Yes. And plans were always to kind of do graduate studies for you.

Yes. It has consistently been an idea for me to do something that I've always wanted to pursue. But in light of this funding announcement, it's making it a little bit more difficult to try to figure out what finances are going to come from, especially like the reliance on myself and my family to contribute to that assistance.

All right. In terms of what we saw at Queen's Park and across the province, we had we had seen not only college and university students at Queen's Park, but we also saw some high school students doing walkouts across the province as well. What was sort of the common sentiment amongst protesters at Queen's Park? What were you hearing from people? I know there was lots of signs. Hands off OSAP, hands off my tuition. But what were you hearing from people?

Yeah, at the end of the day, we were really excited to bring about 4000 people like you have identified students, parents, community members, even high school students as well. We came together to be able to express frustration and anger towards this announcement, because it is completely out of touch with what students need in this moment. So among the things that I've said, that is a shared sentiment among many students worried about what the future is going to look like for them. We are amidst a cost of living crisis where rent is already high, groceries are unaffordable, and these changes are not going to make being a student any easier.

Was there a conversation about, you know, what it looks like for dollar for dollar? And we're talking about money here. What does that look like for some students when we talk about the actual cost of, you know, a year to, you know, how much it cost for tuition this year versus what it will cost next year?

Yeah. So in this funding announcement, what the government explained that they were going to do is increase tuition by 2% every year for the next three years, and then after that by 2% or inflation, whatever rate that they decide to do. There's been a lot of language and narrative about how 2% is a very small amount and increase, but at the end of the day, a 2% increase is still an increase. It's still money moving in the wrong direction. And although I don't have necessarily exact numbers program per program, one can understand and expect that a 2% increase in the first year is going to be compounded over the years. At the end of the day, students never asked for an increase in tuition fees. And if the government truly cared about students and a sustainable education sector, they would not be increasing tuition fees at all.

Now we're talking about an affordability crisis, but a lot of universities and colleges have said that, that they have been in the red for quite a while. As we know, Ontario colleges, over 600 programs cancelled or suspended, and over 10,000 faculty and staff have essentially lost their positions. This is during a time where this is being felt not only among students and families, but also colleges. There's a $6.4 billion investment from the province. It's a significant one. Was this the way to solve it?

Right. What I will say about that is that students and the federation in itself and institutions, we welcome any increased operating funding because we know that they're meant to fill in the gaps that were created by the provincial government. At the end of the day, it's important to consider the context in which this funding is being announced and being shared. This is at a time where students have already experienced different cuts, like you've identified. Hundreds of programs have been cut across the province. We've seen mass layoffs across the province. And so at the same time, this investment is expected not only to make up for those costs, but also respond to the current demand and needs of our institutions. Right. And so the timing, unfortunately, is coming 20 years too late after a government that has consistently made decisions that have made being a student, being a worker very difficult.

You talk about demand. You know, some people argue that maybe this is an opportunity. When we talk about an investment, this is a lot of money that for young people to put down for to go to school and invest in their education, this is also an opportunity for them to also think about what programs perhaps lead to a job coming out of university. So what I will say is that at the end of the day, when it comes to demand specifically like education is right, students have the right to study whatever it is that they want to study. And even though we are seeing again an increase in operating funding, what that funding is being done at this point in time is also being paired at the same time with tuition increases and also no new money actually going into the OSAP system. And so students are still interested to go to school, right? And so with no new money actually going into the sector, we're seeing a strain on the system where more people want to access the system OSAP, but not enough money to be able to actually meet the needs of students. I'll actually show you a quick stat. So in this funding announcement, the government announced that they were going to also invest for 70,000 new seats in this upcoming year. There is a specific statistic statistic from HEQCO that explains that. For people who aren't familiar. So HQHE0, sorry, I just don't remember the acronym off the top of my head, but a reliable source that we utilise for a lot of our numbers, essentially explaining that by 2046, roughly 225,000 new seats would be needed to meet the amount of students who are interested and willing to go to post-secondary education. And so when you contrast that to this current funding announcement, the 70,000 new seats isn't actually going to reach halfway of what we need by the time we get to 2026 and 2027. Which just further goes to show that, again, these funding announcements are so out of touch with the reality that students are experiencing right now.

So when we talk about HECO, we are talking about the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. Correct? Correct. Premier Ford has said that the previous structure was unsustainable. So I want to get in your in your opinion, what does a sustainable system actually look like?

Yeah. So a sustainable system looks like a public education sector that is truly publicly funded. What we've seen across this sector is multiple cuts being made. Like we've identified the program cuts, the mass layoffs, one that doesn't push the burden of stabilising the education sector onto the shoulders of students, because that's what the government is currently doing by increasing tuition, by changing the OSAP framework, in pushing students further into debt and precarity, that is not a sustainable system. Our system right now is one that is overly reliant on tuition fees, bleeding students out dry to fund the education sector when, at the end of the day, that's the government's job to invest in education and they're not doing that.

We're going to leave it there. I really appreciate your time and your insights and of course, your passion as well. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you for having me. I'm Jayann. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What do you like or not like about what we're doing so far? Send us your feedback at TVO.org/rundownfeedback or leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, see you next week.♪