OUSA

Today, the Liberal Party of Ontario announced that, if re-elected, they will double the length of training requirements for elementary and secondary school teachers by amending the Ontario College of Teachers Act. This initiative is intended to improve teaching quality and student success by increasing the time teachers spend training and receiving professional development. The recent announcement highlighted that Ontario’s teacher training requirements are less time intensive than peer-jurisdictions, citing Finland, Japan and Singapore as examples of countries which have longer teacher training and also higher standardized test scores. Additionally, the initiative will reduce the number of teachers graduating in a single year from 9,000 to 4,500, potentially easing current job market saturation.

Students have long emphasized the importance of teaching quality at all levels of education; doubling the training requirements for elementary and second teachers helps support this objective. The Ontario government’s recent Putting Students First plan also committed to developing programs and incentives to improve teaching quality and reward excellence at the post-secondary level, and we look forward to further details as the plan unfolds.

Last year, OUSA released a holistic access strategy that emphasized the important role the elementary and secondary school system plays in shaping student preparation and attitudes towards post-secondary education. Students hope that enhanced teacher training requirements will also equip teachers with the tools to better communicate with students about post-secondary education.

One unanswered question left by the announcement is how the affordability of teacher training will be maintained in the new two-year system, given that students’ costs in tuition and living costs will increase. In addition it is unclear exactly how the additional year will be divided between coursework and practical experience. It remains to be seen what the government’s proposed next steps on tuition and student aid are, which will hopefully be clarified in the coming days.

Overall however, this measure could be an important step in raising the quality of teaching in Ontario. A key next step in fulfilling the promise of Putting Students First is addressing the void in professional development and training for university instructors, who are currently required to complete no instruction in teaching methods prior to entering the classroom.

-Natalie Cockburn
Vice President Finance, OUSA
Vice President Education, Federation of Students at the University of Waterloo

In just a week I will be entering my fourth year as a student at Queen’s University. Fourth year is lauded as the year in which students can finally sink their teeth into critical thinking. They challenge professors in seminars, take advantage of smaller classes to have true discussion, and begin to mold their own hypotheses. Though I’m excited to finally critically engage with course material, I can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t possible earlier in my education. Thus far, my classroom experience can best be characterized as a transfer of information from professor to student. This approach is counterintuitive from a critical thinking perspective, as it creates a disincentive for students to challenge classroom material.

The concept of conflict in the classroom is a topic that Parker Palmer, an academic at the Centre for Courage and Renewal, talks about quite frequently. In his article “Good Teaching”, Palmer writes about the concept of conflict in a consensual classroom. A consensual classroom is defined as a classroom that expects conflict to occur. Proponents of this teaching method argue that conflict can lead to a truer illumination of knowledge than the traditional lecture. Palmer writes in his article,

“A consensual classroom assumes that truth requires many views and voices, much speaking and listening, a high tolerance for ambiguity in the midst of a tenacious community. Consensual truth is not the outcome of majority vote. It is a continuing revelation that comes as we air our differences in public, pay special heed to those who dissent, and seek deeper insight…”

I can honestly say that in my three years in university, I have not experienced a classroom where dissenting opinions and a robust conversation have occurred. Now, this isn’t necessarily the fault of the professor. Large class sizes, limited time together and the sheer volume of material that must be covered all inhibit the culture of a consensual classroom. However, these obstacles should not prohibit discussion and debate from permeating all levels of education, as it does currently. I should not have to wait until fourth year to experience a classroom that encourages critical engagement.

As students we move from a high school model where asking questions is often encouraged to a university model where the first few years of our university education are spent memorizing textbooks and theories. Students tend to believe that they are so stifled under the “burden” of learning that they are unable to stop and ask “why?”

In Taking Stock, Dr. Joy Mighty talks about how good teachers introduce new concepts to students. After explaining the substance of the concept, the professor will show the student how it was discovered. The next and final step is to challenge the concept and only through the introduction of opposing theories does the student begin to understand the concept in a full context. In the traditional lecture, this doesn’t occur. For some reason, we have opted for a model where we spend whole credit courses during the first first three years of university explaining, with only one year dedicated challenging what we’ve learned.

Educators must focus less on viewing the undergraduate experience as wedded to simple information transfer. We need to structure our system so that students can be engaged throughout the process. This means shifting our expectations and our practices to accommodate a model that we are, to date, uncomfortable with. This journey into new models of learning is starting to occur on small scales across universities. At Queen’s we have professors who feature their normal lecture content online and use class time to provoke conversations and study new models. We have professors who break their classroom time into a lecture format that follows Dr. Mighty’s concept of deep learning, where a concept is presented, derived, and then challenged. Throughout Ontario there are professors who are exploring new ways of learning and it falls on our entire system to take a note out of Dr. Palmer’s playbook and look to these small experiments. We might find something that works – and engages us.

-Kieran Slobodin
Vice President (University Affairs)
Queen’s Alma Mater Society

It must be true that times flies when you’re having fun because we both cannot believe we’re already bidding farewell to OUSA and heading back to school. Both of us had the unique opportunity to spend four months delving into issues that are extremely relevant, not just to students but to all Ontarians. Living and breathing policy and research – from the number crunching to the lengthy policy manuals – has allowed us to fully appreciate the amount of detail that goes into forming policy positions and just how complex the policy environment is.

Our time at OUSA forced us to be creative in our framing of policy questions and to be open-minded in our discussions of solutions. Not only has the work itself been incredibly rewarding, but it has also allowed us to impress our friends outside the OUSA office with our knowledge of tuition fee policy details and the many acronyms associated with accountability.  All joking aside, there is something to be said for working in a position where you contribute to something that will matter long after you’ve left your post.

We’ve both had a blast working with students to make Ontario’s postsecondary education system more affordable, accessible, accountable and high quality. We look forward to keeping in touch as proud OUSA alum!

Cheers,
Chris & Kristen

Trent in Oshawa Campus

Trent University has had a campus in Oshawa for over thirty years. Originally located at the Durham and UOIT campus, Trent Oshawa students faced significant challenges in coming together to form a true community. In 2010, Trent Oshawa opened a satellite campus on Thornton Road in south Oshawa. While this allowed us to develop as a community more than on the Durham and UOIT campus, life on a satellite campus has posed many distinct challenges as well.

As the President of the Trent in Oshawa Student Association, I have been working on developing a Trent Oshawa identity. This has meant addressing a myriad of issues, the first of which is course selection. Often many courses with specialized, discipline-specific content are offered exclusively on the main campus. Students of Trent Oshawa often have to select courses not by preference but by what is offered. While students on the satellite campus are able to take courses on both campuses, the 45 minute commute often makes this both impractical and inconvenient.

Some professors at the Trent Oshawa campus teach both in Peterborough and Oshawa. Faculty who divide their time often do not hold regular office hours on both campuses, limiting the amount of connection students in Trent Oshawa feel with their faculty. Students often struggle to meet with professors who mainly teach on the Peterborough campus.

Often on satellite campuses, the library services are not equivalent to the main campus. Students at Trent Oshawa are faced with a very general assortment of books in the small shelves of the library. On the plus side, students can order from the main library in Peterborough; however the wait time to be delivered from one campus to the next can be up to 3 working days. Students on satellite campuses should have access to the same resources that are available to students on the main campus without having to wait an exorbitant amount of time.

The Trent Oshawa campus also lacks a real bookstore. Students are required to buy books from the Oshawa campus for 5 days in the first week of classes; otherwise they must travel to the main campus. Last year, the line up for books often averaged several hours, with many students finding out that the bookstore supplier did not order enough books for the course. Our student association lobbies consistently for more opportunities to purchase books, to no avail thus far.

A particularly key issue for students on the Trent Oshawa satellite campus are food services. The food service hours of operation are nowhere near Peterborough’s services and the selection lacks diversity. With 800 students on Trent Oshawa’s campus, the demand for food is not as high as the main campus but Trent Oshawa students deserve diverse and nutritious dining options all the same. Making this problem worse, the Thornton road campus is not within walking distance of any restaurants or coffee shops, therefore making it impossible for students to access non-campus food during their break.

A more subtle struggle faced by our Trent in Oshawa Student Association is the lack of administrative departments located on the campus. Oftentimes, decisions affecting our livelihood are made on the main campus, with little chance for us to engage directly with the decision makers.

The Trent in Oshawa Student Association is trying hard to rectify the struggles and issues faced by our students on this satellite campus. The faculty and staff at the Trent in Oshawa campus have been instrumental in promoting the needs of Oshawa students. However, our small size and limited resources have posed many challenges so far.

Our story is not an isolated one, as more and more universities set up satellite or branch campuses. While these campuses can open up access to university to more Ontarians, these pursuits also need to be done in a way that protects the student experience. The Ontario government has recently developed a satellite campus policy that restricts the development of new satellite campuses without government approval. Students are working with government to ensure that these regulations include minimum standards for academic and non-academic student supports. We have to ensure that all of Ontario’s students are supported in the pursuit of their degrees – not just those on a main campus.

-Kelly Vanleyden
President, Trent in Oshawa Student Association

Students are pleased to see that the Ontario government has modified the credit check requirements for the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) to open up access to more students who need aid.

Since 1998-99, students with poor credit history had been barred from receiving OSAP. The provincial government defines this group as individuals who have been 90 days in arrears on three or more personal loans, including credit cards or car loans, with a combined value of $1,000 or more. All students that did not receive OSAP in the previous academic year were screened, regardless of age. This was a more stringent policy than that used by the Canada Student Loans Program, which only screens applicants who are 22 years or older.

Beginning this year, the credit check requirements have been harmonized such that applicants under the age of 22 and applicants who had previously received OSAP will not be subject to a credit check.

Unlike other students, individuals with poor credit are often unable to access private loans, and therefore are particularly in need of financial assistance in order to attend post-secondary education.  While the ostensible rationale for barring these individuals from accessing assistance is that they would constitute a risk for the financial assistance system, a poor credit check would leave some students with nowhere else to turn. This change will, at the very least, ensure young students with a history of poor credit receive a second chance and can access sufficient resources to afford higher education.

Individuals who have past student loans that are in default also face difficulty in accessing any further financial assistance. Students must repay the full value of the defaulted portion of the loan before being able to receive further funding. This means that students who would otherwise be eligible for new funding from OSAP in excess of that which is owed due to default must first come up with the money to clear their default.

As part of the province’s social safety net, students with poor credit or who have defaulted on their loans should not be banned from receiving OSAP. The new rules that only screen applicants who are 22 years or older is an important and welcomed step forward. The next step is allowing students in default to have their outstanding loan balance be deducted from their new funding, rather than have to come up with the money first.

-Sam Andrey
Executive Director

TORONTO, August 22 /OUSA/ – Students are supportive of proposed changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) that would provide more aid to students. The Ontario PC Party announced today that, if elected, the provincial need assessment will be changed to match the federal parental contribution formula. This change would result in more realistic parental contributions.

“Adjusting OSAP’s parental contributions to more accurately reflect the lives of Ontario families has been a long standing priority of OUSA. This is an important step towards a stronger financial aid system for students,” said Sean Madden, President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA).

Nearly half of Ontario’s students are unable to receive financial help from their parents. The proposed changes would make meaningful provincial assistance available to thousands more students. Assuming the current student debt cap remains in place, the proposal will result in more non-repayable grants for students.

“Ontario families want to support their children in pursuing post-secondary education. More realistic expectations for how much they can contribute are essential. The next step is to provide certainty for how much it will cost,” said Patrick Searle, Vice-President of OUSA.

The current framework that caps tuition increases expires at the end of this coming academic year. While encouraged by today’s announcement, OUSA looks forward to working with all provincial parties to clarify their plans for tuition fees before the election. Ontario students are calling for a fair, predictable and affordable framework.

It’s that time of year again; as summer jobs, internships and vacations come to an end, students across Ontario are preparing themselves for the quickly approaching school year. Of course, this is not the story of every student. Indeed, “back-to-school” can be a misnomer for part-time students, many of whom are mature students juggling the demands of family, work, and school all year long.

One particular area of difficulty for part-time students is provincial student financial assistance through the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP).  In fact, as line-ups begin to swell at Student Financial Aid offices across Ontario post-secondary institutions – as early as August 23 at McMaster University – they will do so without part-time students in them. This is because part-time students (taking a course load that is less than 60%) are not eligible for OSAP. Consequently, they are also not eligible for many of Ontario’s need-based assistance programs, work-study programs, scholarships and bursaries. There is a limited amount of repayable financial aid offered through the Canada Student Loans program, but total outstanding loans for part-time students are not allowed to exceed $10,000. In 2007-08, only 1,436 part-time students received loans, with an average value of $1,948. That represents only 0.4% of all recipients, despite part-time students making up 18% of Ontario university students. Since the changes to part-time aid announced in the most recent federal budget will not come into effect until 2012-13 or 2013-14, part-time students will continue to pay interest on loans while in school until that time.

The other provincial student financial assistance programs that exist for part-time students are the Ontario Special Bursary Program (OSBP) and the new Ontario Part-Time Student Grant. Unfortunately, these are even harder to access than the part-time Canada Student Loans. Specifically, some of the eligibility requirements are unreasonably stringent. Though the OSBP offers only $2,500 per year, single students may report income no higher than $14,000 to be eligible, married students and sole-support parents with a single child are capped at $23,000 and married students with one child or a sole-support parent with two children are capped at $31,900. Further eligibility restrictions include a provision that studies must be towards a first degree, diploma or certificate and that said students have not attended post-secondary in the past on a full-time basis.

The limited scope of assistance available to part-time students ignores the reality that many struggle financially. Part-time students are more likely to have family obligations, employment burden and children under the age of five. Ten years ago, over a third of part time students reported using private loans from financial institutions, compared with only a fifth of full-time students. With the cost of education on the rise, it is reasonable to expect that these proportions are not shrinking. These borrowers tend to face higher interest rates and faster repayment terms, and do not receive interest relief provided in the public system.

The exclusion of part-time students from financial assistance puts many at a disadvantage in Ontario’s knowledge-based economy where life-long learning is a necessity. This necessity is further exacerbated during economic downturns, evidenced by increased enrolment in certificate/diploma programs. In times of uncertainty, many individual looking to increase their employability return to post-secondary for a second time. Even if these students demonstrate extreme financial need, they will not be eligible for sufficient aid.

Ultimately, such financial barriers are problematic for many part-time students.  It would be ideal if OSBP restrictions were relaxed so as to increase the number of part-time students that are eligible for this funding and that the provincial government consider extending OSAP eligibility for part-time students. The OSAP need assessment is designed to determine if a student has sufficient financial resources to attend university. A well-designed formula should be able to determine which part-time students need support and which don’t.

It’s time that part-time student financial aid reflects the lived reality of students.

-Sam Minniti
Executive Director
McMaster Association of Part-Time Students

The Student Association at Durham College & The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) is hiring a General Manager. Please flick on the PDF Link below for more information, and email studentcentre@dc-uoit.ca with any questions you may have.

Your-SA GM

Position Description:

The General Manager will serve as the Chief Operating Officer of the Student Association at Durham College and UOIT. The General Manager will report to the Student Association President, and all non-executive positions within the SA will report directly or indirectly to the General Manager. The position is a full time position, working 40 hours per week. There is an expectation of occasional evening and weekend work in addition to regular office hours.
The Student Association is a complex organization which represents approximately 15,000 students across three campuses and two institutions. The organization oversees several departments and services, and works closely with both Durham College and UOIT in order to ensure the needs of all students at these schools are met.

The General Manager will oversee the full time staff of the Student Association, and through departments direct and oversee the day to day operations of the business side of the organization. The General Manager will work very closely with student leaders each year to serve the needs of students on campus, as well as with university and college administration to achieve the goals set out by the organization. They are responsible for ensuring that organizational documentation such as policies and procedures, manuals, licenses, and insurance documents are in place and upheld.

As it currently stands, all universities in Ontario operate on a system of capped tuition increases. Arts and science programs are set at a cap of 4.5% for first year entrants and 4% for subsequent years of study, while allowable increases in professional and graduate programs are 8% in first year followed by 4% for subsequent years. An institution’s overall increase must not exceed 5%. Any tuition revenue raised beyond this cap is clawed back from the institution’s government funding, generally resulting in universal compliance. This framework has been in place since 2006 and is set to expire at the end of this academic year.

A study on the period of tuition deregulation in Ontario’s professional programs in the mid-1990s serves as evidence that sudden and unpredictable increases in tuition can have a discernable effect on the composition of the student body.  Through the deregulated period, both medicine and law saw a decline in participation from middle-income families that accompanied unpredictable year-to-year tuition increases not matched by increases in available resources. In order to plan their finances effectively, it is crucially important for students to understand how much they will pay in tuition over the full course of their program of study, regardless of entrance year or program type.

Thankfully, tuition is regulated for Ontario students in the vast majority of programs (save for a few programs not funded by government). Unfortunately, this regulation has not erased predictability concerns. Since the current framework bases increases off an institutional average with variable program caps, tuition increases can be different from program to program, or between institutions. For instance, the large difference between the arts and science program cap of 4.5 per cent and the professional program cap of 8 per cent has led to widespread confusion amongst students about their tuition increases.

Firstly, the difference between an arts program and a professional program is murky. Data on tuition increases by institution have demonstrated a certain degree of inconsistency in program classification across institutions, creating potential for confusion around expected tuition increase at the student level. For example, while commerce is permitted a professional cap of 8% at the majority of schools, three institutions still classify it as arts and abide by a 4.5% cap. In the same vein, universities treat computer science programs differently across the province.

Secondly, there are a number of instances where tuition increases have fluctuated significantly within their allowable cap. For example, tuition increases in the commerce program at Carleton University fluctuated back and forth between 4.5% and 8% over four years between 2006 and 2010. Similarly, Lakehead University’s engineering program showed increases from 2.5% to 6.3% to 4.5% within a three-year span, demonstrating an inherently unpredictable series of tuition fees for students. In a program such as engineering, which already boasts the highest average tuition level amongst direct-entry programs, a few percentage points up or down can translate to a significant difference in price for students. Lastly, each time the tuition framework is up for review, students are faced with the possibility of significant increases to the tuition cap that they have not initially planned for. In this sense, a potential change in the allowable increase affects predictability for those already partially through the PSE system, potentially affecting a student’s ability to persist to the point of graduation.

Predictability is even more of an issue for international students given that tuition for this group is completely unregulated. The deregulation of international tuition fees has led to a system characterized by both unpredictability and dramatic increases. For example, the University of Toronto saw international tuition grow by 5 percent between 2006-07 and 2007-08, followed by 10 per cent each of the following two academic years. Similarly, York University saw fees increased by 18 percent in 2006-07, followed by an increase of only 1.4 percent. It is clear that under the current regime of deregulation, international students are effectively prevented from planning for future tuition payments. There are few, if any, services that one decides to use in which the final price is unknown – why should post-secondary education be any different?

The tuition framework was introduced to provide predictability for students. The current framework though has not fully addressed the difficulty of predicting tuition levels for students four or five years into the future. Not only does the current framework allow increases to fluctuate unpredictably at times, but also the system as a whole is structured in a confusing way. Students are often not able to predict how much they will be paying for tuition during the course of their time at university. Tuition fees are not formulaic and thus, not predictable when program classifications are blurry and increases fall within a range that is near impossible for students to predict.

Allowing unpredictable fluctuations in tuition increases from year to year is a sure way to affect participation and persistence in post-secondary education. When students and families struggling to save for higher education do not fully understand how tuition fluctuates or are not confident in the consistency of the capped increase system, we risk losing them to non-attendance. This is particularly true for groups that have been shown to be more price-sensitive when it comes to paying for post-secondary – students from lower-income families, those with less educated parents, Aboriginal students, and boys.

The government is going to have a number of decisions to make on the tuition framework this coming year. If it is ultimately decided that tuition increases will continue, we urge the government to institute a more straightforward, long-term and predictable system of increases. Predictability is a key component of the tuition puzzle and something that has been identified as critical to increasing participation in the post-secondary system as a whole.

-Kristen Holman
Research Intern

This weekend, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that students working in the not-for-profit sector will be eligible for an extended interest-free grace period from Ontario Student Loan payments after graduation. As such, graduates who work for organizations that are not-for-profit will not be required to begin paying back their student loans for a full year after graduation. Registered charities and advocacy groups are examples of workplaces that would make recent graduates eligible for the program, whereas the public and private sector would be ineligible.

All students are currently allowed a six-month grace period, which allows students time to access employment and begin earning income before OSAP payments begin. This grace period is interest-free on the Ontario Student Loan, while interest begins to accumulate immediately on the Canada Student Loan portion which accounts for approximately 60% of the average aid package. This flextime is critical to helping avoid student loan defaults, which have fallen substantially over the past decade from 9% to 5%. Additionally, it is well known that students with high debt obligations are less likely to have savings, purchase automobiles or property and contribute fully to the economy. Time to accumulate some savings and plan for payment is critical to a student’s ability to thrive later in life.

As such, the new program is a clear incentive for students to take work in the not-for-profit sector. The Premier has stated that this was indeed the goal of the program. Since non-for-profit wages are often lower than comparable public and private sector wages, this incentive could persuade some graduates to pursue charity or advocacy work. At the very least, it will help some students struggling with debt repayment in concert with the recently implemented Repayment Assistance Plan.

It is also worth noting that this program is the first known component of the forthcoming Liberal platform for education. It is encouraging to see that this initial contribution to the election has been centered on post-secondary education. The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance looks forward to the full platform and further clarity on the party’s proposed next steps on tuition and financial assistance to ensure access to higher education for all Ontario students.

Patrick Searle
VP University Affairs
University Students’ Council, University of Western Ontario