Zainab Dada, Staff Writer
Featured image courtesy of Michael Zusev, Photo Editor
Starting in the 2017-18 school year, students from low-income families will be able to receive “free tuition” through the new Ontario Student Grant.
Most provincial grants will be replaced with the single Ontario Student Grant.
The changes are in response to the C.D. Howe Institute and student groups advocating for re-allocation of universal tuition and education tax credits into a targeted support for students from lower income families.
Also, it’s designed for money to be received in a more timely manner, when tuition needs to be paid at the beginning of the semester rather than the end.
“Ontario is moving forward with the single largest modernization of the Ontario Student Assistance Program in its history to ensure student financial aid is more transparent and targeted to those with the greatest financial need,” says Tanya Blazina, media spokesperson from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.
“All students, regardless of background or circumstance, should be able to afford to go to college or university in Ontario,” she adds.
Students whose parents earn $83,300 or less in annual income receive enough grants to more than cover the costs of tuition.
This will also eliminate provincial student loan debt for students whose parents earn less than $50,000 in annual income. It will also ensure no student receives less non-repayable aid through the new grant than they currently do through the 30 per cent off Ontario Tuition Grant.
Among these includes new aspects previously not included under OSAP.
Mature students, married students, and students who have been out of high school for more than four years will now have access to grant support.
However, student reactions to the budgetary changes are mixed.
Natasha Prashad, fourth-year human rights and equity studies student, applauds the government’s change to OSAP.
“For me, I’m thankful enough to at least have been able to have my school paid for by my parents,” she says.
“But I feel like it would allow this right to education that all the lawmakers and policy makers say that we as students have become a reality. Because it’s one point to say that we have rights as young people to vote, to [have an] education, and to talk [freely] but it’s another thing to have the medium and means to be able to exercise those rights.”
Sabena Vijay, a fourth-year sociology student, expressed more dissatisfaction for the announcement.
“It is frustrating for me as a fourth-year student nearing graduation with OSAP debt coming from a low-income family. What happens to individuals like me that come from a low-income family, do we still have to pay off our debt? I think that we should be relieved from them.”
Blazina maintains that the Ontario Student Grant aims to “break down barriers to education and helping ensure all Ontarians can access post-secondary education is a key part of our plan to support good jobs and economic growth, and it’s the right thing to do.”
From the 2018-19 school year, Ontario will also reduce how much it requires parents or spouses to contribute toward the costs of post-secondary education, giving students from middle and upper-income families more access to interest-free and low cost loans through OSAP.
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