Host: Daniel Coral 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?

Noah Morris: Very well. Thanks.

Host: Alright, 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?

Daniel Coral: 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.

Noah Morris: 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.

Daniel Coral: Alright, Noah. 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.

Host: Alright. We'll, let's pick up on that. Daniel, what are the what's at risk when we look at sort of these structural changes to OSAP that Noah kind of alluded to there.

Daniel Coral: 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.

Host: 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?

Daniel Coral: 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.

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

Noah Morris: So it's it's in there were three phases to it. So I became the director of OSAP in 2007. Okay. 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.

Host: 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.

Daniel Coral: 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 $7000. 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 $7000, and now the maximum grants, mostly federal, are in the 3 or $4000. 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.

Noah Morris: Okay, that adds up when you're doing a four year program. 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.

Daniel Coral: Alright. 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?

Noah Morris: 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 201819 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 announces increases. Those are very generous provinces. 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.

Daniel Coral: 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, a 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.

Noah Morris: Your take on that is in terms of structuring OSAP versus.

Daniel Coral: 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.

Noah Morris: Alright, 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.

Daniel Coral: Yeah. No, there's a lot there's a lot of 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, 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.

Noah Morris: Right. Alright. 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. Do colleges take that advice?

Daniel Coral: 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.

Noah Morris: 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.

Daniel Coral: 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 really 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.

Host: Alright. 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?

Daniel Coral: 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 real 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.

Noah Morris: Which starts the second they done school.

Daniel Coral: 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.

Noah Morris: Noah. You're not letting I can't use money, right?

Daniel Coral: Yes. Money aside.

Noah Morris: 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.

Daniel Coral: Danny, what are the future repercussions of an undereducated generation?

Noah Morris: 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.

Host: Alright, gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there. Noah. Danny, really appreciate your insights on this.

Noah Morris: Thank you.

Daniel Coral: Thanks.