Interviewer: Cyrielle Ngeleka is chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario, and she joins me in studio. How are you doing?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: I'm doing good. Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: 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?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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.

Interviewer: 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.

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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.

Interviewer: 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? I know there was lots of signs. Hands off OSAP, hands off my tuition. But what were you hearing from people?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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.

Interviewer: 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?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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, you know, students and a sustainable education sector, they would not be increasing tuition fees at all.

Interviewer: Now we're talking about an affordability crisis, but a lot of universities and colleges have said 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?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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 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.

Interviewer: 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.

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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 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 from HECO that explains that. For people who aren't familiar. So HQHEO, 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.

Interviewer: 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 opinion, what does a sustainable system actually look like?

Cyrielle Ngeleka: 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 stabilizing 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 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.

Interviewer: 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.

Cyrielle Ngeleka: Of course. Thank you for having me.