Eligible students will receive up to $1,600 for financial assistance
Tamara Khandaker
Staff Writer
@Anima_tk
Many students standing in the long line outside Inkblotz in York Lanes waiting to drop off their loan certificates are completely unaware that this month, some of them will be eligible to receive a $1,600 tuition rebate as promised by the Ontario Liberal government.
Upon hearing about the program, Anushiya Kumaran, a third-year accounting student, is appreciative of the financial break.
“It’s not substantial and it’s not enough, but it’s something,” she says. “At least it will pay for the textbooks. Tuition is [going] up, so I think it’s good.”
Full-time undergraduate students who have applied for the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) and whose parents make under $160,000 per year will be automatically enrolled in the program and receive the rebate in time to pay the second installment of their tuition.
“The Liberal grant is still a bit of an enigma,” says Alastair Woods, vp campaigns and advocacy for the York Federation of Students (YFS). He explains that while the Liberals still remain intent on getting the program up and running, it has been complicated by the process
by which the grants will be delivered.
Woods says the government has proposed that students taking OSAP will automatically receive a credit to their account, but students who are not on OSAP will have to apply through a website that is not yet operational.
“If it takes OSAP four months to verify your financial information—and that’s an entire bureau with a lot of employees—I worry about the effectiveness of this website to verify people’s financial status and actually delivering the grant to students who need it and qualify,” he says. “I’m worried that it might become a logistical disaster.”
Debra Sulaiman, a third-year children’s studies major, supports the limitations of the program with regards to parental income. “If your parents make over $160,000, you’re in the six-figure income so I think it’s fair,” she says. “I don’t think they need the money.”
However, the program is designed to help only students in their first four years of university life.
“The reason we said four years is because in year five, students become independent, and we calculate their student aid, grants, and assistance based on their own personal income, not on their parents’ income,” Glen Murray, minister of training, colleges, and universities told the Toronto Star December 27.
Sulaiman feels it is unfair that only undergraduate students are being assisted, and not graduate students or part-time students.
“They should have an allowance for grad students and part-time students too,” she argues. “They are still paying to come to school.”
Shahin Saboori, a first-year computer science major, agrees.
“Graduate students might have families, and it’s really hard.”
The program, which provides $730 in relief to college students and $1,600 to university students, is expected to cost the government $201 million in 2012 and at least $423 million the following year
