OUSA

My name is Kim Orr and I’m the OUSA campus coordinator at the University of Windsor. On Tuesday January 25th, 2011, I had the unique privilege of representing local students to the Provincial Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, in conjunction with Robert Woodrich, the VP University Affairs of the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance.

We were able to convey to the Committee what it means to be a student in post secondary education today and the difficulties that students face when trying to balance work and school. We emphasized how increasing the debt load of students only makes this balance more precarious. Increasing the OSAP debt repayment cap from $7,000 to $7,300 last year meant $1,200 more dollars of debt for students – that’s over 120 hours of work at minimum wage. We found that breaking down student debt in terms of its  true impact on students sent a powerful resonating message that was well received by the Committee. Reducing the OSAP cap, by moving government funds spent on tax credits to reduce student debt and extend OSAP eligibility, was the emphasis of our presentation and was well received by the Committee.

We also discussed increasing government support for support services, in particular supports for international students. Windsor has one of the largest international student populations in Ontario’s universities, and increasing the support available for these students is a key priority for the UWSA.

We received a variety of questions from the Committee, including questions on pedagogy training for faculty, tax credits, university funding and studying abroad. It was a great experience to represent Windsor students in the pre-Budget consultations, and I’m looking forward to see what comes of it in the March Budget announcement.

-Kim Orr
OUSA Campus Coordinator, University of Windsor

On Tuesday night, the District School Board of Niagara approved the implementation of a new regional school dedicated to low-income students whose parents did not attend post-secondary education. The DSBN Academy, which will start in September in Welland, is thought to be the first of its kind in Canada, and will offer advanced curriculum, tutoring, mentoring, parental involvement, before- and after-school support, nutrition programs and free transportation.

The literature on access emphasizes that a holistic approach is necessary, which simultaneously tackles access barriers through several supports early in life, including academic, personal, financial and parental supports. The use of a multi-pronged strategy has been critical to the progress of other successful outreach programs, such as Pathways to Education. From the initial plans, it appears that the DSBN Academy is taking this message to heart, and attempting to implement a holistic approach.

Unsurprisingly, reaction from the public has been mixed. Many see it as an innovative idea that will provide considerable help to the students who need it most. Others understandably worry about the effects of segregation, and feel these kinds of supports should be broadly available in all schools. There is also some concern that the application process, which requires students to demonstrate motivation for pursing post-secondary studies, may prevent some students who would benefit from extra support from enrolling.

OUSA has been emphasizing for years the importance of early outreach in primary and secondary school, as a necessary part of a strategy for closing the stubborn post-secondary education participation gaps of many underrepresented groups. Many government access initiatives have been implemented with mixed success, and it will be interesting to watch the results of DSBN Academy. As a Niagara native and a student representative at Brock University, I will certainly be watching with interest.

- Daud Grewal
VP University Affairs, Brock University Students’ Union

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Ontario Mental Health in Post-Secondary Settings working group at Ryerson University on behalf of OUSA. The working group came together as a follow-up step to the mental health and addiction summit held in October by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. A variety of stakeholders from the college and university sector participated in the working group, to discuss what changes are necessary to better support and improve mental health in post-secondary settings.

There is concern that the incidence of mental health issues has been rising on university and college campuses. According to a 2009 study by the American College Health Association, the number of students accessing counselling services has increased over the past decade. The incidence of severe psychological disorders has also increased to 44 per cent, up from 16 per cent in 2000, and the proportion of students requiring medication has risen by seven per cent. Many counsellors in Ontario believe that American trends in mental health are mirrored in Canadian colleges and universities.

In light of the rise in mental health issues, it is important that university and college campuses have adequate support in counselling and mental health centres. Increased demand for services combined with rising student populations have strained existing mental health and counselling services at many of Ontario’s institutions. Yet mental health services should be prioritized as a crucial part of promoting student success as a whole. Not only do mental health centres provide prompt service for students when they are going through periods of crisis, but they also engage in preventative health promotion, anti-stigma education, and other initiatives that can foster a healthy, welcoming campus environment for all students.

The Ontario government is currently developing a new 10 year strategy for mental health and addictions, focused on enabling individuals and communities to optimize their mental health and well-being. Students believe that adequate mental health services on post-secondary campuses are an essential component of a plan to identify problems early and create healthy communities. The Ministry of Health, Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities, post-secondary institutions, and students must continue to come together and discuss how best to fund, improve and expand mental health services on campuses. The dialogue at yesterday’s working group was a great place to start.

-Laura Pin
Research Analyst

After the significant investments in post-secondary education provided in the government’s Reaching Higher Plan announced in 2005, following this act was always going to be hard, even in a time of surplus. Yet back in March of last year, students were very encouraged to see the government promise to build on its previous commitment through a new five-year quality plan for the sector. As part of the Open Ontario Plan, the government promised to “work with all its partners in education, training and business to develop a new, five-year plan to improve the quality of Ontario’s postsecondary education system.”

Over the past year, OUSA has brought the needs and priorities of Ontario students to the attention of government, and we look forward to seeing a five-year plan that provides specific, necessary improvements to the student experience. First and foremost, this means a recognition that an imbalance between teaching and research has been created, that quality teaching is no longer given the value it deserves, that the age-old methods of instruction are not good enough anymore, and that our professors need more training and support. If this is going to happen, however, we have to be sure to learn from our mistakes just as we build on our successes.

The Premier and his government have shown leadership by prioritizing higher education in our province. They recognized the tremendous value that an investment, such as Reaching Higher, could have for post-secondary education and the long-term prosperity of Ontario, most notably by providing enough funding to create over 100,000 new seats at our colleges and universities. But the plan was also intended to improve the quality of the learning environment by hiring more faculty members, and ensuring public dollars went to good use through a strong accountability framework. Five years later, students across the province agree that the quality improvements to student-faculty interaction and the student experience that we all hoped for did not materialize as fully as expected.

Even with substantial growth, per-student funding increased by about 4 per cent during each year of Reaching Higher, and tuition increased by 5 per cent each year, leaving students to wonder where exactly these increases went. Unfortunately, while multi-year accountability agreements continue to have potential, the way they have been implemented has not provided the level of accountability that was anticipated, and there are few concrete answers to these pressing questions.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, I suggest that it is this: if we want to see specific improvements to the quality of a higher education in Ontario, then the government must directly fund these goals. We’ve tried providing a lump-sum increase while tinkering with reporting mechanisms and it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. It’s time for government to make priorities and fund them directly for success.

Perhaps the best example of this is to bring it back to the quality of teaching and learning at our institutions. We have known for decades that passive learning methods are inferior to active learning pedagogies, such as service-learning, problem-based learning, and inquiry-based learning. Certainly, meaningful change will require new resources, but waiting for institutions to re-evaluate the way they teach could mean many decades more before a change to the culture of teaching and learning truly takes hold. The problem has been identified, the solutions presented, and it’s now up to government to demand the change that the students and people of Ontario need to see.

Colleges and universities were created as places of learning. You simply can’t have a five-year quality plan that doesn’t directly address improving the learning environment for students.

-Meaghan Coker
OUSA President
USC VP University Affairs, University of Western Ontario

TORONTO, January 24 /OUSA/ – Today, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) released students’ priorities for the 2011 Ontario Budget in its submission entitled An Educated Investment: Advancing Post-Secondary Education. Meaghan Coker, President of OUSA, will present the submission this afternoon to Ontario’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs and participate in the Committee’s pre-Budget consultations. She will outline students’ three key priorities: ensuring access to higher education, adequately investing in our universities, and promoting student success.

Students’ first recommendation to improve accessibility is to fulfill the Liberal government’s platform commitment to reallocate funds spent on education tax credits to reduce students’ up-front costs. Other proposals include reducing the expected parental contributions of Ontario Student Loans to make more families eligible for aid, and extending the Ontario Access Grants to all years of undergraduate study.

For the government’s new five-year plan for post-secondary education, students recommend planning to meet the demand for growth, demonstrate progress toward a more fair cost sharing model, and invest in targeted quality improvements. Specific proposals to promote student success include pedagogy training for all new faculty and teaching assistants, the creation of Ontario Teaching Chairs, and a new matching program for enhancing student support services.

“The government showed its continued commitment to post-secondary education in last year’s Budget by providing $310 million for new spaces in colleges and universities and $81 million for enhancements to student financial assistance,” said Ms. Coker. “Students have welcomed these past investments and hope that Budget 2011 will continue building a more accessible and high-quality post-secondary education system.”

An Educated Investment: Advancing Post-Secondary Education – OUSA’s Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs (Click Image to View Online Version)
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OUSA's 2011 Budget Submission

-70% of all new jobs will require some form of post-secondary education.

-Students with university educated parents are 3 times more likely to go onto university compared to students whose parents had a high school education.

-The proportion of Aboriginal students completing high school is only 60%, the same as the national average in 1971.

-Less than one in ten aboriginal Ontarians have attained a university degree.

-Higher income students are more than twice as likely to attend higher education in comparison to low-income students.

-Rural students are 60% less likely to attend university than urban students.

-Participation gaps between aboriginal and non-aboriginal, as well as high and low-income students have all stagnated or increased over the past decade.

-Half of youth decide whether or not to attend post-secondary before grade nine, 35 per cent before the age of nine.

-The average tuition in Ontario is $6,640 per year, the highest rate in Canada.

-The average student debt after graduation is $26,680, with OSAP loans taking an average of 7 years to pay back.

-For every dollar invested into higher education, there is a four dollar return into the economy.

-Early outreach to students as young as Grade 8 demonstrates dramatic results in increasing participation in higher education for underrepresented groups.

I am writing from the Sutton Place Hotel in Toronto where OUSA is participating in the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations’ annual conference. This year’s conference, entitled The Race to Globalize Higher Education in Canada, is off to an excellent start, stimulating discussion on the many facets of the internationalization agenda.

The first presentation from Andre Turcotte of Carleton University provided interesting insights from a recent poll into Ontarians’ views on the affordability of post-secondary education and perspectives on international recruitment. Particularly fascinating was the finding that 54% of Ontarians thought attracting international students was important, while nearly two-thirds of respondents felt it was fair for these students to pay two to three times more in tuition than domestic students.

Next up was an address by Glen Jones from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on the history of Canada’s pursuit to internationalize higher education. The presentation provided an excellent overview of the past and current barriers to internationalization, the important role of our federal and provincial arrangements, and where the country and the province may be headed.

The afternoon will be filled with more presentations on the Australian experience of internationalization, on how to internationalize students, faculty and curriculum, and finally on Canadian universities’ attempts to establish campuses abroad.

I’d like to thank OCUFA for the invitation to attend this wonderful forum. OUSA has been working actively with the government on its internationalization agenda, stressing our concerns with international tuition, financial assistance, employment opportunities, health insurance and support services. With that in mind, we are looking forward to listening and contributing to the conversation today and tomorrow on this important issue.

-Meaghan Coker
OUSA President

Today, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities John Milloy announced plans to make it easier for students to apply for financial assistance. Starting this year, OSAP applications will be made available in February, a full three months earlier than previously. Students applaud this move as an important step in making it simpler to access government financial assistance. Providing access to the OSAP application earlier will mean students can apply for assistance while they are in the process of applying to and receiving acceptances from institutions, giving them more time to adequately plan for their post-secondary education expenses.

The plan to make OSAP applications available earlier complements the $81 million dollar package of improvements to the financial assistance system that the Ontario government announced last March. It also follows the recent overhaul of the OSAP website and the important addition of a financial aid calculator that provides prospective students with a rough idea of the assistance they could receive from the government, both of which are important steps to improve student literacy of financial aid.

In the context of increasing tuition fees, a strong financial assistance program is imperative to maintaining access to post-secondary education for all willing and qualified individuals. OUSA continues to develop recommendations for enhancing existing financial assistance programs, most of which can be found in our updated policy on student financial aid. Students have welcomed the efforts the government has made thus far in improving financial assistance, and encourage the government to continue to examine ways to improve the affordability and accessibility of post-secondary education to ensure that no student is unable to pursue higher education due to financial constraints.

-Laura Pin
Research Analyst

When I was 9 years old my parents put me in piano lessons to try to channel my childish energy into mastering an instrument.  I loved music even at a young age and I loved playing, but the lessons were frustrating.  You see, I had this teacher who was an absolute master of her craft and very much wanted to teach me to play just as well as she could, but she didn’t know how.  Eleven years later, this still happens to me.  Except this time, it’s happening in my classrooms.

There is nothing more fundamental to the success of our students than having top-notch educators. After all, we all went through a primary and secondary education system where our teachers had an education in education. But we when entered university, that expectation stopped.  While many of our professors, instructors and teaching assistants are gifted teachers, they require no formal training in how to be effective educators and that disconnect is hugely apparent in many more. Now is the time for change.

There is a renewed call for the development of teaching assistant training programs in our schools to help improve the quality of instruction our undergraduates experience. There is a focus on teaching assistants as these are the instructors that arguably have the most direct contact with students and are relied on when students are struggling to grasp the material.  Furthermore, most teaching assistants are graduate students, many of whom will become the next generation of professors. The formation of a teaching assistant training program would benefit all; students would get educators who have training in effective pedagogies and our TAs would receive formal training on communication techniques, a skill that is valuable in the classroom and in industry.

At the University of Waterloo, work is underway in the Faculty of Environment and the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences on the creation of a training program that all teaching assistants would undergo at the beginning of every term. Although this is an invaluable first step, subsequent steps are needed. OUSA would like to see steps taken towards the creation of a teaching and assessment training module built into all graduate studies programs province-wide.

Over the past decade, the federal and provincial governments have poured money into expanding our institutions’ research capacity. While OUSA agrees that research is a vital component to the success and development of our students, the impact research has is diminished if the researcher does not have the skills necessary to effectively translate their thoughts.  New funding should be targeted in the provincial funding framework to help fund these new teaching initiatives.  Making government funding contingent on the development of instructor training would send a signal that the status quo is no longer good enough and would be a large step in improving teaching quality on all of our campuses.

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

Too often, discussions of the accessibility of higher education, and the government’s welcomed initiatives to tackle this important problem, revolve solely around financial barriers. Yet for some time now we have known that informational and motivational barriers are equally, if not more, responsible for lower participation among some underrepresented groups. Informational barriers refer to a lack of necessary information about educational options, career paths and financing to pursue postsecondary studies. Students from a number of underrepresented groups are more likely to be unaware of key information regarding the post-secondary options available to them, the application processes, and financial aid programs.

This is why OUSA applauds the government for launching a new advertising campaign to reach out to Ontarians and give them direction to find the post-secondary option that’s right for them. The “My Future” campaign, which will run until the end of February, includes advertisements in television, cinema, community and campus newspapers, public transit, and online banner ads. All of these advertisements point Ontarians to a new government website where they are informed of the benefits of post-secondary education and can view supporting testimonials from over a dozen students. The website is organized as a simple FAQ that answers vital questions, such as “is it worth it,” “what if I need help when I’m there,” and “what if I need help paying for it?” There are also brochures, postcards and posters available for download so you can help spread the word.

This is a great way to reach out to prospective students who just need some basic information and a little motivation to “turn their passion into a career.” OUSA is hopeful that this is the first step in a broader shift in government attitude toward addressing informational and motivational barriers to access. In the coming weeks, OUSA and our partners at the College Student Alliance and the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association will be releasing a comprehensive access strategy that recommends many simple initiatives like this campaign that would address barriers of all kinds.

Reaching the Premier’s 70% attainment target will require re-evaluating and building on past successes to raise participation of underrepresented groups, and this campaign is a great start.

-Alvin Tedjo
OUSA Communications Director