OUSA

OUSA’s Student Advocacy Conference is well under way at Queen’s Park in Toronto. After two days of wall-to-wall MPP meetings, there’s just one more day left before delegates head home back to their home campuses.  We’ve been having a great time so far, so here’s an update!

We began on Sunday with a full day of planning, featuring an incredibly insightful, albeit extended, session with former OUSA President and Western Alumni David Simmonds.  Your steering committee and associate delegates worked all day to finalize advocacy priorities and hone our messaging.

Our conference commenced Monday with Question Period, where Minister Milloy introduced OUSA’s presence to the Legislature.  After an hour of Parliamentary back and forth amongst the parties, the meetings began in earnest.  OUSA managed to get over 70 MPP meetings over the three day conference, meeting with over two-thirds of Cabinet.  OUSA also booked meetings with several civil servants in the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, along with key stakeholders and partners including the Council of Ontario Universities and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

It’s been great engaging politicians in extremely proactive and productive conversations about the future of post-secondary education in our province.  We’re focusing our efforts on three areas: a strong new five-year plan for the sector, including an emphasis on the quality of teaching at our institutions; eliminating educational tax credits and redirecting the money to up-front grants; and creating a comprehensive access strategy.  It also is worth mentioning that student financial assistance continues to be a hot topic in our meetings. It’s a dynamic issue that is always changing, and OUSA has remained committed to improving the system throughout our advocacy efforts.

Looking forward to the final day!

-Kristen Leal
Government Affairs Commissioner
Federation of Students, University of Waterloo

It is no secret that large classrooms will be a part of the university experience in Ontario for the foreseeable future, particularly in first and second year survey courses. Class sizes severely lessen during the upper years, but having a professor stand in front of 600 students does little to engage or help those transitioning from high school to university. During my nearly five years in the world of post-secondary education, I have been through almost every single kind of class – the large class with the extremely passionate professor that keeps the students enthralled to the massive first year class that is more reminiscent of a morgue than a university.

The first and second year classes are arguably more important than the upper year ones. They are the classes that will determine if a student will stay at university or not. Ensuring that these classrooms have the most up-to-date technologies is paramount to keep students enrolled and engaged. McMaster, and I am sure most universities across Ontario, has a massive dichotomy between buildings, with some that have touch screens, microphones, and live boards, while others just have a an overhead projector. Given the economic times that every person, place and thing have been subjected to, drastic measures have been taken to balance budgets. Unfortunately, universities have taken to deferring hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance, including technology upgrades. This will prove to be extraordinarily harmful to the high quality of education that Ontario prides itself on.

Since deferred maintenance likely will not be rectified in its entirety for years, one of OUSA’s flagship policies is becoming ever more necessary. Having doctoral students, who will in all likelihood have to teach undergraduate students as a teaching assistant or new professor, take a course on how to teach would do wonders to improve the quality of education. Formally training those who will be teaching would add a tremendous amount to undergraduate education in the province. The government requires that those teaching primary and secondary school be trained in teaching pedagogies, and post-secondary education should not be any different. This would cost very little to implement and could have a dramatic impact. To put it simply, students should have access to the best technologies and the best professors possible.

- Joe Finkle
Vice President (Education)
McMaster Students Union

Educated Solutions - Issue 7 (Fall 2010)

TORONTO, Nov 22. /OUSA/ – The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance has released its 7^th issue of Educated Solutions.  Educated Solutions is an annual student-focused magazine that is designed to provoke thought, discussion and dialogue about higher education in Ontario.

This issue was themed around student success and the quality post-secondary education. It features a foreword by Bob Rae, former Premier of Ontario, an article on the future of student success by McMaster University President Patrick Deane, and an article on bringing teach-oriented faculty into the mainstream by the authors of Academic Transformation.

Educated Solutions also features an OUSA year in review, campus updates, and the president’s message.  This issue was printed with mixed sources, approved by the Forestry Stewardship Council.

The magazine is available in hard-copy format from the OUSA office, or from your campus steering committee member or campus coordinator.  To receive a copy, please email communications@ousa.on.ca.  An online version is available via this website.  Click on the image of the magazine to be sent to an online reader.

Students in Ontario who do not have the financial resources to pay for the rising costs in tuition and living expenses turn to OSAP in order to finance their education. However, students have made it clear that the current system needs to be improved; far too many of our peers are slipping through the cracks in OSAP, and as a result are either graduating with massive debt loads or not graduating at all. OUSA has responded to these concerns by engaging with the wealth of literature that exists on the subject and passing a landmark policy paper at our recent General Assembly on November 8^th. We have put together a comprehensive framework that will provide the government with the tools necessary to create a robust, sustainable system of financial assistance for students attending university in Ontario. I encourage you to read the paper in its entirety when it is released on the website; in the meantime, I will here outline two recommendations that are of particular concern to my constituents at Queen’s.

First and foremost, the government must continue to regulate tuition. Students are unequivocal about this recommendation. Historical instances of deregulation in Ontario have shown to have a significant impact on access for middle- and lower-income students, and OUSA recognizes that an education without representation from all aspects of society is intrinsically deficient. Furthermore, any model of student financial aid will necessarily be affected by the significant increases in tuition that follow deregulation. It is our view that a public system of financial aid would not be able to keep pace with universities’ increases in tuition, and as a result students would be driven towards private loans even more than they are now. Students welcomed the move to freeze  tuition in 2004 and appreciate the ongoing regulation and cap on increases, though more could be done to slow the growth well above inflation.

A second recommendation that resonates with my constituents is that the government should allow students to earn unlimited in-study income until such a time that the OSAP need assessment accurately assesses students’ needs. As it stands, students may earn $103 per week before OSAP deducts their pay from the amount loaned. The average working student earns significantly more than this paltry sum, but because their pay is deducted from their loan, they find that they still do not have sufficient financial resources to cover their need. Students appreciated the government’s move last year to increase this threshold from $50 per week. However, until such a time as the needs assessment formula can accurately perform its function, the government should further lift the limit on in-study income for students on OSAP.

These are just two of fifty-four educated solutions that OUSA recommends in our comprehensive paper on Student Financial Assistance. These positions are student-oriented and student-driven, drawing on some of the best research in the sector. Once released, I encourage you to read the full report and invite you to work with us toward an affordable, accessible, accountable and high quality system of post-secondary education in Ontario.

Chris Rudnicki
Vice-President (University Affairs)
Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University

November 7^th marked the official passing by OUSA General Assembly of our updated Access Policy Paper.  As the author of the paper and the leader of the Saturday breakout session (presentation sessions allowing delegates to express concerns and comments about specific policy papers), let me start by expressing gratitude to all delegates for their professionalism and sincere concern during Plenary, Breakout Sessions, and over the entirety of General Assembly.

Early Outreach proved to be a popular topic and the comments and criticisms of the paper only helped improve its advocacy, its clarity, and its strength of message.  Comments during the breakout sessions and plenary helped expand the paper’s approach and recommendations regarding guidance counselling in Ontario high schools.  The discussion during plenary also led to a fleshing out of a recommendation addressing dual credit programs for at-risk high school students.

Over two days I had many conversations with OUSA delegations from different backgrounds.  Some conversations were during the breakout sessions, some were during plenary, and some were at casual times throughout the weekend.  However, one delegate made a comment that touched upon the fundamental importance of Access.  Her words weren’t specific to a particular section of the paper, but merely to the topic of Access:

For me access isn’t about filling seats, fulfilling enrolment goals, or about
system growth.  It’s about discovering potential. If a student is willing and
qualified we should be doing our best to ensure they reach higher education,
regardless of the barriers they may face.

Tasked with a robust set of recommendations, I have high expectations of what OUSA can achieve in the following years and how the organization can help students discover their potential.

Kieran Slobodin
Academic Affairs Commissioner
The Alma Mater Society, Queen’s University

Last week, Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky announced that the government plans to improve the financial literacy curriculum in Ontario’s schools by fall 2011. This is welcome news to OUSA, as it is an important step forward to improve the state of financial aid literacy among Ontario’s post-secondary students.

Before buying a car or a house, getting married or starting a family, most young Ontarians will first complete some form of post-secondary education, and many will take on significant debt loads to do it. While instruction in financial literacy should cover everything from obtaining a mortgage to saving for the future, the first major financial barrier most Ontarians must overcome is financing higher education.

The Premier has recently set an ambitious target of 70% participation in post-secondary education. Unfortunately, many prospective students do not understand the financial assistance that is available and turn away from further education because of the perceived cost. Children from high-income families are two-and-a-half times more likely to attend university as children from low-income families. Studies from the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation and Statistics Canada have shown that a broad range of factors contribute to this gap, including debt aversion and whether the student has discussed and planned for higher education. As a result, CMSF stated repeatedly that early access to information regarding financial aid is a primary and necessary component of financial aid modernization.

OUSA’s recent work on financial aid literacy has uncovered just how pervasive this problem has become. On June 3^rd of this year, OUSA and its partner student alliances from across Canada released a report on the severe lack of financial aid literacy among Canadian undergraduates. The report, based on a survey of over 20,000 students, found that three-quarters failed a short financial aid literacy test covering some of the very basic facets of the Canada Student Loan Program.

Some of the more distressing results include:

• Roughly one in five students who identified as debt-averse were unaware that it was possible to receive a grant without taking out a loan.
• Of fifth-year students who thought they would not quality for a loan, 71% were unaware that their parental income would not be taken into account.
• 57% of government loan recipients risk paying hundreds of dollars in additional interest because they did not know that interest on their Canada Student Loan begins to accrue immediately upon graduation.

To address these issues, OUSA made a submission to the government’s Working Group on Financial Literacy, stressing the information barriers that are preventing many low-income students from accessing financial aid and a successful post-secondary experience. OUSA was pleased to see that the Working Group has recommended curricular changes to assist students in “planning for life after high school”, and is hopeful that the government will soon clarify exactly what role financial aid literacy will play.

We strongly recommend that any financial literacy curriculum include an understanding of the repayable and non-repayable aid available when pursuing a higher education, as well as the tremendous financial benefits that are associated with it. Furthermore, this information should be presented to students at or before Grade 9 to influence student choices around which course streams to select. The Council of Ontario Universities has shown that 35% of university applicants decide to attend university before they reach the age of 9, and 73% before the age of 15.

In sum, the government should be applauded for moving forward with necessary improvement to the financial literacy curriculum, but students await clarification of the role that information about financial aid will play. Something as simple as adding a mock OSAP application to the Career Studies curriculum could be the difference for thousands of Ontario students who turn away from financial assistance.

-Alexi White
OUSA Executive Director

At OUSA’s General Assembly last week, student leaders from across Ontario passed a policy paper on accessibility to post-secondary education. Several key recommendations in the paper centered on pathway mobility and credit transfer. At first glance, improving access to post-secondary education and the issue of credit transfer between institutions may seem to have little in common. However, many students from low-income, first generation, and rural backgrounds participate in college and the workplace at rates comparable to their peers, yet these students participate in universities significantly less. Improved pathway mobility and credit transfer mechanisms would help qualified students make the transition to a new institution, while reducing duplicate learning and costs.

Roughly 25 per cent of Ontario’s college students cite attending college in order to prepare for university, but only 9 per cent actually enrol in university after completing their college studies. Many university students also look to enrol in post-graduate college programs to enhance their skills. Nearly 55 per cent of college-college transfer students and 65 per cent of college-university transfer students cited the existence of specific transfer agreements between pathways as being a major or minor reason behind their decision to continue their education. Without fully developed transfer mechanisms, many qualified students are unable to access their pathway of choice because their prior academic work is not recognized. Even university-university and college-college level credit transfer is usually on an ad-hoc, inconsistent basis, which makes it difficult for potential transfer students to predict how many of their courses will count in a new program.

The Government of Ontario has recognized increasing student mobility as a long-term priority for the post-secondary sector. This was further highlighted in the 2010 Budget when it was announced that the government would be “improving students’ ability to navigate Ontario’s postsecondary system by providing additional resources to support the implementation of a credit transfer system.” Students have been in full support of this initiative and participated in the Credit Transfer Steering Committee led by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

While there has been modest progress due to the efforts of many in the sector, we remain a long way away from OUSA’s vision of the credit transfer system, which is a system-wide, consistent and transparent system that reduces the duplication of student learning. Students understand the resistance of some stakeholders to this initiative and their worry about the long-term effects on the value of institution’s degrees. But we believe there are many steps that can be taken that will vastly improve student mobility without compromising learning outcomes or institutional autonomy.

Students believe key steps to improve the Ontario credit transfer system moving forward should include:

• All universities adopting the Pan-Canadian Protocol on the Transferability of University Credits and agree to accept all first- and second-year courses from any university

• All Ontario universities at least recognizing university credits from all Ontario universities as electives

• Reducing residency requirements such that only fifty per cent of a student’s credits must be taken through the institution where the degree is granted

• Stopping the practice whereby universities require a minimum grade for the transfer of a credit

• Encouraging faculty-to-faculty consultations on transfers, class descriptions and learning objectives

• Providing student support in navigating the credit-transfer system, while ensuring students know which credits will transfer prior to accepting admission

• An appeals mechanism where students can challenge credit transfer decisions and be subject to testing of prior learning

• Creating a public database of past credit transfer decisions to improve transparency and consistency in the way credit transfers are reviewed at different institutions

• Adjusting academic transcripts to note the institution where each credit was received and a system-wide agreement to transfer the student’s grades with the credit

-Laura Pin
OUSA Research Analyst

TORONTO, Nov. 11 /OUSA/ – Nearly three-quarters of university professors surveyed believe research has a bigger payoff than teaching, according to a report to be released tomorrow by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and available at www.heqco.ca. The report, entitled University Faculty Engagement in Teaching Development Activities, reaffirms the need for greater government and institutional leadership in promoting teaching and learning on Ontario’s campuses. While 95 per cent of professors at six Ontario universities indicated that teaching is important or very important to their professional practice, only 61 per cent believe that teaching is important or very important to their institution.

“Ontario’s professors clearly want to do more to enhance the quality of their teaching, but they are discouraged by a system that is driven by research dollars and institutional prestige rather than learning outcomes for students,” said Meaghan Coker, President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA). “This report should be on the desk of anyone concerned about the quality of a post-secondary education in Ontario.”

In addition to a general lack of emphasis on teaching, the report identifies a number of common barriers professors face in improving their teaching techniques. These include an overemphasis on research funding, a lack of incentives for the scholarship of teaching and learning, a flawed expectation of how professors divide their time between research and teaching, an abrupt transition from graduate student to faculty positions with little or no support for learning how to teach, and a tendency to forget about the needs of sessional and contract lecturers.

To drive institutional change, students are asking that the provincial government provide additional funding for teaching and learning that would be conditional upon each institution:

• Requiring new professors and all graduate students to undergo formal instruction in teaching, learning, and assessment;
• Increasing the capacity of their Centre for Teaching and Learning;
• Offering at least one small class experience to all first-year students;
• Appointing a teaching and learning leader in each department; and
• Establishing a taskforce on teaching and learning to recommend improvements on how to reward and measure teaching quality.

OUSA also calls on the province to lead by example and to establish chairs in teaching, similar to the research chairs already in existence.

“With a multi-year quality plan for post-secondary education under development, students are hopeful that we will see this research translate into the leadership and direction necessary to bring about a shift in the institutional culture around teaching and learning,” added Coker.

TORONTO, Nov. 11 /OUSA/ – Nearly three-quarters of university professors surveyed believe research has a bigger payoff than teaching, according to a report to be released tomorrow by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and available at www.heqco.ca. The report, entitled University Faculty Engagement in Teaching Development Activities, reaffirms the need for greater government and institutional leadership in promoting teaching and learning on Ontario’s campuses. While 95 per cent of professors at six Ontario universities indicated that teaching is important or very important to their professional practice, only 61 per cent believe that teaching is important or very important to their institution.

“Ontario’s professors clearly want to do more to enhance the quality of their teaching, but they are discouraged by a system that is driven by research dollars and institutional prestige rather than learning outcomes for students,” said Meaghan Coker, President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA). “This report should be on the desk of anyone concerned about the quality of a post-secondary education in Ontario.”

In addition to a general lack of emphasis on teaching, the report identifies a number of common barriers professors face in improving their teaching techniques. These include an overemphasis on research funding, a lack of incentives for the scholarship of teaching and learning, a flawed expectation of how professors divide their time between research and teaching, an abrupt transition from graduate student to faculty positions with little or no support for learning how to teach, and a tendency to forget about the needs of sessional and contract lecturers.

To drive institutional change, students are asking that the provincial government provide additional funding for teaching and learning that would be conditional upon each institution:

• Requiring new professors and all graduate students to undergo formal instruction in teaching, learning, and assessment;
• Increasing the capacity of their Centre for Teaching and Learning;
• Offering at least one small class experience to all first-year students;
• Appointing a teaching and learning leader in each department; and
• Establishing a taskforce on teaching and learning to recommend improvements on how to reward and measure teaching quality.

OUSA also calls on the province to lead by example and to establish chairs in teaching, similar to the research chairs already in existence.

“With a multi-year quality plan for post-secondary education under development, students are hopeful that we will see this research translate into the leadership and direction necessary to bring about a shift in the institutional culture around teaching and learning,” added Coker.

TORONTO, November 9 /OUSA/ – Undergraduate students recognize the benefits associated with a greater internationalization of Ontario’s universities and are concerned by the increasingly divisive political atmosphere surrounding this issue.

The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), representing nearly 6,000 international undergraduate students, firmly believes in the need to expand international enrolment, as these students add to the diversity of perspectives and experiences in the classroom, enhance the broader cultural diversity on campus, and contribute significantly to the economic prosperity of the province.

“International students are our classmates and our friends. They deserve to be treated fairly by our institutions and our government,” said OUSA President Meaghan Coker. “With all that these students bring to our universities and to our province, the conversation should be about what we must do to provide the supportive learning experience that they deserve.”

Undergraduate students would welcome further investment in the priorities of international students. OUSA is hopeful that the provincial government will:

· regulate international student tuition at a fair and predictable level

· provide incentives for universities to improve their international student support programs

· re-enrol international students under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP)

· expand the Opportunities Ontario program to assist students in gaining permanent residency status

With tuition fees increasing at an unsustainable rate, students agree that more needs to be done to improve the accessibility and affordability of higher education. OUSA has applauded recent improvements in financial assistance for domestic students and will continue to advocate for and support investment in all undergraduate students.

The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance represents the interests of over 140,000 professional and undergraduate, full- and part-time university students at seven Ontario institutions.