OUSA

April is a stressful month for students for a number of reasons. Not only do students have to cope with term papers and final exams, but it’s also a time when many students are starting to feel the pressure if they don’t already have a summer job. Finding meaningful summer employment that develops the skills necessary for a job after graduation in their field of study can be a daunting task for students, made even more difficult by the necessity of juggling job applications and interviews with a final exam schedule. In addition, employers are often reluctant to invest significant training in an employee that will be returning to school in four months, making it challenging for students to break out of the burger-flipping employment bubble. Last summer, the unemployment rate for Ontario students who planned to return to school in the fall was the highest in the country and twice that of other Ontarians at 17.5 per cent. Among students who did find employment, the average number of hours worked was only 23.6, indicating that full-time positions can be difficult to come by.

For all these reasons, Employment Ontario’s Summer Job Program is a key resource for students who are looking to gain meaningful summer employment. Through the program, students aged 15 to 30 can search for jobs in a variety of fields that are specifically designated for students returning to their studies in the fall. Additionally, non-profit, private and public employers are offered a $2.00 per hour incentive to hire and train students. The program also offers grants to students who have an entrepreneurial bent, and wish to start their own business. Last year, approximately 130,000 secondary and post-secondary students gained work experience through the Summer Job Program, and yesterday the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities announced an additional investment of $22.5 million in the program. This program and others like it enormously benefit students. Rather than handing the money to a limited number of students in the form of a grant, or further increasing student debt through a loan, summer work programs give students the opportunity to earn money to pay for their education while gaining relevant work experience. We congratulate the government for its continued investment in a program that should go a long way to helping students across the Province.

Speaking of summer jobs, OUSA would like to welcome Kristen Holman and Chris Rudnicki to the home office team. The two have been selected as the OUSA summer interns to start in May, and we’re really looking forward to working with them. Congratulations to both of them!

-Sam Andrey
OUSA Director of Research & Policy Analysis

On Friday, an issue that often isn’t talked about enough – student mental health – was thrust into prominence with a front page article in the Globe and Mail.  The feature was triggered by a number of heart-rending deaths which have occurred at Queen’s University in the past year, including the presumed suicide of a third-year student last week.

It is tragic whenever a student’s wellbeing and success is compromised by mental illness.  Unfortunately there is widespread concern that mental health problems are becoming more and more prevalent at Ontario universities and colleges. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, mental illness affects one in five Canadians, and this number is even higher among post-secondary students, where close to a third of students experience elevated psychological stress. According to the American College Health Association’s national survey, mental health and substance abuse rates have increased substantial over the past 20 years. The survey found that 29% of students reported being unable to function due to depression at some point in the past year, 9.4% of students suffered from anxiety disorders and 6.1% seriously considered suicide. Many counsellors have detected similar trends in Canadian colleges and universities. A number of factors can help shed light on why college and university is a time when many students experience mental health issues:

• The typical age of onset for many disorders is 18 to 24, meaning individuals often have their first encounter with mental illness while in college or university
• Many students at university or college are living away from home from the first time in their lives, at a distance from familial and social support network
• Universities and colleges are often demanding, competitive, high-stress environments, which can trigger anxiety and depression related illness
• Improved outreach at the primary and secondary level has meant that more students with mental health issues are able to access post-secondary education but may require ongoing support throughout their studies

Because students cope with a broad range of mental health issues, it is important that they can access comprehensive mental health services in a timely manner. Student support services play a key role in enabling students dealing with mental health issues to make the most of their post-secondary experience. An inability to access these services can lead to an amplification of existing problems, which ultimately has devastating consequences on a personal, academic, and societal level.

For these reasons, students were heartened when the new Ontario Budget, released in March, announced $257 million in new funding over three years for mental health and addiction services for children and youth.  This funding, channelled through the province’s Mental Health and Addiction Strategy, has the potential to make significant strides in improving mental health for all Ontarians. At the same time, while acknowledging the importance of intervention at the primary and secondary school level, it is important to recognize that funding and improving mental health services on post-secondary campuses is also a critical component of an effective youth mental health strategy.  Entering university or college is an exciting time in a person’s life – a time of personal growth, learning, development and change – but it can also be incredibly challenging. It is important that students have the supports they need to deal with any mental health issues they may face during their studies, and optimize their personal wellbeing and success.

-Laura Pin
OUSA Research Analyst

A little under a year ago I ran for the position of Vice President Administration of OUSA, and it was a decision I do not regret in the least. I had a basic idea of what the position entailed, but it turned out to be so much more than I thought.

This year, in addition to my regular duties of taking minutes and editing them, I choose to conduct a full review of the operational policies of OUSA. In this, I ensured our operating policies aligned with our bylaws and filled any holes that needed to be dealt with. In doing so, OUSA now has operating policies on presidential expenses, submissions, conference fess and others. Also, the policies are now in an easy to follow format.

Beyond the writing of policies, I was honoured to be a member of the OUSA Executive and it is an experience I will not soon forget. Representing OUSA on a nearly day-to-day basis has provided me with skills and knowledge that will carry with me. I would like to thank the Steering Committee for entrusting me with the position and for their advice, input and help.

-Joe Finkle
OUSA VP Administration
MSU VP Education

In an attempt to simultaneous woo Canadian families and improve the accessibility and affordability of higher education, the Liberal Party’s recently announced platform includes a $1 billion plan called the Canadian Learning Passport that would give every post-secondary student a grant of $1,000 per year ($1,500 for low-income students) to help with their costs. Given Ontario’s dubious distinction as the province with the highest tuition fees, this plan would provide much needed relief to the hundreds of thousands of students in our province and across Canada.

Increasing access to higher education is crucial for economic growth and social equality. With over 70% of new jobs requiring a higher education, Canada needs to be ready, and that means doing as much as possible to help underrepresented groups, such as low-income students, rural students, and Aboriginal students, access the system. The Liberal’s Learning Passport will undoubtedly help.

Part of the funds to finance the Learning Passport were raised by eliminating the federal textbook and education tax credits, programs that tend to benefit wealthier families and do not provide support up-front when students need it most. While this is certainly a positive step, the Liberal Party also missed an opportunity to eliminate the much larger tuition tax credit, which suffers from the same shortcomings as the other tax credits. To be fair, this credit is proportional to the total fees each student pays and therefore focuses help on provinces with higher fees (such as Ontario). However, investing some of these funds in expanding our national loan and grant programs would have given students up-front help and still preferentially benefited students who have higher fees.

It is also unclear how the program will keep up with rising costs and if the $1,000 and $1,500 grants will be indexed to increases in students’ costs or become less valuable each year. It would also have been preferable for a universal grant program to be delivered directly to institutions to act as a tuition reduction rather than be delivered through the Registered Education Savings Program (RESPs), given these savings vehicles are currently used disproportionally by higher-income families. However, we understand the difficulty and complexity that would have resulted from a direct transfer to all public and private institutions across the country.

Regardless, the plan was a welcome addition to the national dialogue and elevated post-secondary education to a key issue in the election. As the other political parties release their own plans to improve access to higher education, as we fervently hope they will, all Canadian should take note. More than ever, higher education is the driver of our economy and our prosperity. Students especially must defy expectations and vote in larger numbers, or these critical issues may again be overshadowed by competing priorities.

-Alexi White
Executive Director

Everything is better when we work together. Although simplistic, this statement rings true for many things in life, none more so than the post-secondary education sector.

Partnership amongst stakeholders has always been important to OUSA. As a younger organization, now in our 16^th year of official incorporation, the support of our partners has been indispensable to where OUSA is today. Collaboration has been a long standing principle of the stakeholders in our sector, which is evident in the way that we all continue to come together year after year, priority after priority, and issue after issue.

For these reasons and more, OUSA is honoured every year to host a celebration of this partnership.

Last Thursday evening, March 31^st marked the seventh Annual Partners in Higher Education Dinner. This year, the theme of our conversation was centred on the accessibility of post-secondary education in Ontario, a priority that OUSA and many others have invested considerable time and effort.

The programme for the evening included a keynote address from Dr. Ross Finnie, a professor at the University of Ottawa who offered an important perspective into research surrounding issues of access to higher education. Following Dr. Finnie, we were joined by a panel, including Joseph Berger from Higher Education Strategy Associates and formerly of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, Stacey Young from Pathways to Education Canada, Rick Miner with Colleges Ontario and former President of Seneca College, and James Bradshaw from the Globe and Mail. The panel brought together four distinct perspectives offering us all a more nuanced understanding of the approach to be taken in addressing the barriers to higher education that students face across Ontario. Lastly, we were also joined by the Honourable Bob Rae who offered his observations on the challenges of accessibility and the critical importance of investment in higher education in Ontario and Canada.

On behalf of OUSA I want to extend my sincere thanks to our thoughtful speakers, inspired students, loyal alumni, and dedicated partners from the post-secondary sector and our universities. Because of all of your interest and support, the Partners’ Dinner continues to be an evening of celebration, thoughtful discussion and an appreciation for what brings us together – our common desire to build the most accessible and highest quality post- secondary system in the world.

-Meaghan Coker
OUSA President

Last Thursday, the Toronto Star published an op-ed by Queen’s Principal Daniel Woolf and former TD Chief Economist Don Drummond entitled ”Who will pay the bills for the education dream?” I must omit a great deal to distill their argument, but this is its essence:

A highly educated populace is good for Canada so more people should get a higher education. Our institutions will require four to five percent more revenue each year to cover their costs and maintain quality, but government can’t afford to contribute so students will have to pay more in tuition – perhaps five to seven percent more each year. To ensure that all can still afford to go, financial assistance needs to be improved by providing targeted funding to those with the greatest need and by rethinking the current loan-based system, perhaps by introducing income-contingent loan repayment.

It’s a compelling argument, much of which students wholeheartedly support. For instance, the suggestion that greater participation in higher education is necessary for to secure future prosperity is thoroughly supported by research, regardless of whether the occasional Globe and Mail columnist disagrees. Indeed, students have for decades advanced the piece’s central argument that financial assistance in Ontario and Canada needs some serious work, not just in terms of funding but also better provision of information. Still, the authors make a number of quick assumptions and propose some specific recommendations that deserve a closer look.

The authors’ first assumption is that colleges and universities need annual increases in operating revenue that are well above the rate of inflation. We know that the Government of Ontario has promised to fully fund new growth at current levels and that each additional student brings with them new tuition revenue. The only question left is how to offset cost inflation on a per-student basis? Rather than consider whether growth in costs (such as faculty and administrative salaries, utilities, technology, research, pensions, etc.) could be constrained, the authors accept high inflation as a fact. With students increasingly questioning why quality improvements did not materialize under the Reaching Higher Plan – when per-student government funding and tuition fees increased substantially every year for five years – it is time for the assumption of unstoppable cost inflation to be examined more closely.

The second assumption is a straightforward one: government is broke and can’t afford to invest further in higher education. This immediately overlooks the fact that governments have the ability to increase their revenue streams if their citizens are willing to contribute. The discussion should not be on whether or not government is broke; it must consider whether the people of Ontario should contribute more to funding the system. Implicit in the authors’ argument is the idea that the people of Ontario cannot contribute any more through the tax base, but that for some reason students and their families can or should. This could be a legitimate argument, but it is very different than saying the government is broke. It also ignores various polling results that suggest that the majority of Ontarians are willing to pay more in taxes for increased spending in post-secondary education. It also glosses over the fact that college and university graduates make up just over 50 percent of taxpayers but contribute 70 percent of the tax base. Ultimately, Ontario is faced with a choice of how to fund our institutions. We should not be pretending that choice has been made just because the Province is in a deficit.

Turning to the conclusion, the article proposes changes to our student aid system to introduce more income-contingent repayment along the lines of the Australian and UK system. This point was similarly proposed in the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario’s recent tuition policy analysis. The subject of income-contingent loan repayment schemes is controversial in Canada. Many rightly point out that there are ways to design such a program that are deeply regressive and that the implementation of these programs in many jurisdictions has led to massive tuition increases and the elimination of non-repayable assistance. The Australian design goes part of the way in addressing these concerns by eliminating real interest (the loan is indexed to inflation), though the 20% discount for those that pay up-front still acts in much the same way as an interest-bearing loan. This scheme also requires considerable funds to subsidize interest and non-repayment. According to the OECD, 17% of Canada’s spending on tertiary education is for student aid, compared to 31% in Australia and 42% in New Zealand. The argument could be made that the type of investment required to design an effective income-contingent loan repayment system would be better served either reducing up-front costs or making more of our current system non-repayable.

It should also be noted that the recent changes to the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) in Ontario advocated for by students have gone a long way toward making debt repayment more income-contingent in a far more progressive manner. The beauty of RAP is that by providing interest and payment subsidies to only those who need it (and eliminating all debt after 15 years of repayment) the program uses scarce funds to do the most good. The strength of other countries’ systems though is their universal access to loans that ensures no student with insufficient up-front resources is barred from entry. Here in Ontario, students who do not receive contributions from family or are unable to find a summer job are forced to take out private loans or work through school to compensate for being ineligible for sufficient OSAP assistance. It is for this reason that OUSA continues to push the government for a secondary loan system, similar to the Stafford Loan system in the US in which all students could receive publicly-backed loans. These loans could be entirely repayable (and therefore come at a lower cost to the government), but would be eligible for RAP and ensure no student is shut out for lack of funds.

None of this should be seen as taking away from the authors’ main and important point that financial assistance in Ontario and Canada does require serious attention. The Ontario government has made significant improvements that should not be understated, but the needs assessment remains broken, parental contributions are unreasonable, too many students have need beyond the assistance provided, millions are spent ineffectively on tax credits, more targeted grants are sorely needed, and thousands of students from underrepresented groups remain excluded.

Students await the conversation that will take place over the coming months on the government’s new tuition framework and its plans to ensure student affordability and accessibility. We are also encouraged by the recent interest that Ontario universities have shown in improving student assistance policy.

We hope, though, that the conversation will not begin with pre-determined conclusions on cost inflation and government funding. Tuition doesn’t need to increase and financial assistance doesn’t need to fall short. It’s Ontario’s choice.

-Alexi White
OUSA Executive Director

Research on barriers of access to Ontario’s post-secondary education system increasingly highlights the importance of reaching out to youth at a young age to increase participation, since nearly three-quarters of applicants decide whether or not to attend college or university before the age of 15. School guidance counsellors are uniquely positioned to influence the post-secondary aspirations of students. A student’s guidance counsellor is often the first person who discusses career planning with them, as well as a figure both parents and students look to for information and advice. Considerable progress has been made to improve guidance through the establishment of Student Success Teams and the implementation of a compulsory guidance course, and guidance counsellors provide valuable, timely advice to students. Post-secondary students are hoping to work with school counsellors and the Provincial government to take further steps to ensure equal access to PSE, including the following:

Ensure guidance departments have adequate staff and resources to help students in their transition to life after high school.
Students are concerned that guidance counsellors are not always providing adequate information about post-secondary pathways. A recent Canadian study concluded that “school guidance counsellors and teachers…have very little impact on the decisions made by students” and that students needed more information on post-secondary admissions, programs, career choices, and costs. Part of the difficulty comes in providing up-to-date information, especially with a complex financial assistance system that is always evolving. More resources are required to provide ongoing professional development and training that will enable all guidance counsellors to provide current information on PSE and financial assistance options.

Incorporate more post-secondary education and financial aid information into the curriculum.
Students are also concerned about the lack of information about financial assistance that should be available through guidance counsellors and the broader curriculum. The 2010 Canadian Student Survey found that most students, including those who cited guidance counsellors as their primary information source, performed poorly on a financial aid literacy test. As one focus group participant explained, “I spent a lot of time working with my guidance counsellor, but … when you talk to your guidance counsellor, you talk about what you are going to do with your life, not how you will pay for it.” Innovative financial aid programs cannot improve post-secondary participation rates among underrepresented groups if these students are unaware that such assistance exists when deciding whether or not to pursue higher education.

Ensure accurate information for all students so that they are streamed appropriately.
Guidance counsellors are seen as a resource for information and assistance when pursuing post-secondary education. There is concern that some students are being streamed into preconceived pathways of best fit, rather than pathways that reflect their individual abilities and aspirations. Some may be streaming otherwise qualified students, particularly those from low-income, Aboriginal, racial minority, or rural and northern backgrounds, away from the more rigorous secondary school courses necessary for university and college programs. Conversely, some students are pushed into the university pathway to the exclusion of other choices.

Students believe that the current guidance system assists many students in developing and refining their PSE and career aspirations. At the same time, taking steps to overcome the shortcomings of the current system could help combat the barriers that many students face to pursuing post-secondary studies. Students look forward to continuing to work with the Ministry of Education and Ontario’s school counsellors on enhancing student success and creating a more accessible post-secondary education system in Ontario.

-Laura Pin
OUSA Research Analyst

Student representatives from OUSA and the College Student Alliance came together on Thursday for our semi-annual meeting with the Higher Education Publishers’ Group of the Canadian Publishers’ Council. In attendance were representatives from the five major publishers of textbooks used in Canadian post-secondary institutions. Despite some predictable disagreements, overall the meeting was a productive session.

The first item on the agenda was hearing from a representative for Access Copyright, the collective that most Canadian universities and colleges use to compensate publishers and authors for the copying of print works. The collective has proposed an increase in its tariffs to the Copyright Board of Canada effective January 1, 2011 from $3.38 per student plus 10 cents per copied page for course packs to $45 per student, arguing that further compensation is required for the rising use of digital copying. This massive increase – which has been objected to by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada – is obviously a concern of students, as much or all of it would no doubt be passed on to students through ancillary fees. Students at the University of Western Ontario have already seen a dramatic increase in fees in anticipation of the proposed tariff increase being approved by the Copyright Board (a measure that will prove unfair to current students if the proposed change is not approved). It was helpful though to hear the perspective of Access Copyright as the tariff discussions continue on campuses across the country. There was also some discussion on the now defunct Bill C-32 and the ongoing debate about the proposed fair-dealing exemption for education.

Another lively conversation began shortly after as we moved into discussion on the cost drivers behind the price increases for textbooks. As discussed at our last meeting, one of the primary drivers is professors’ desire to purchase ‘bundled’ textbooks that come with additional resources for students and instructors. The discussion quickly turned to students’ concerns with the growing use of online testing software that comes coupled with textbooks that students are required to pay for to complete mandatory grades. In our opinion, these products constitute a violation of the government’s regulations regarding compulsory ancillary fees and represent a downloading of operating costs onto students. While the publishers were quick to defend the pedagogical value that these resources can have, I think it was helpful for them to hear our perspective that it is not necessarily the products that are the problem, but the way that the products are purchased (though I think many of us would also argue that high quality education cannot come in a box).

Other items on the agenda included efforts in Ontario to remove the Harmonized Sales Tax from e-textbooks in the same way that printed and audio textbooks were exempt in the harmonization, and initiatives to get more information about textbook options to Ontario school counsellors.

As always, the meeting allowed both sides to gain greater insight into each other’s perspective, and we both came away with some shared goals and priorities. We wants to thank the Canadian Publishers’ Council for hosting us and we look forward to continuing to collaborate and share students’ feedback.

-Sam Andrey
OUSA Director of Research & Policy Analysis

Next Thursday, March 31st, OUSA will be holding its 7th annual partners in higher education dinner in Toronto. Every year, this event brings nearly 200 guests, ranging from students, administration, faculty, civil servants, MPPs, and other higher education sector stakeholders. The event itself is meant as a celebration of the ongoing partnerships that OUSA enjoys with its other stakeholders, as well as an opportunity to discuss and debate important issues facing the sector and students. Additionally, we take this opportunity to recognize outstanding contributions in teaching by awarding OUSA’s teaching excellence award to faculty from each of our member schools. OUSA also recognizes outstanding contributions to the sector by awarding an honourary membership.

This year, the keynote speaker is Dr. Ross Finnie of the University of Ottawa. Dr. Finnie is an outspoken proponent on access to post-secondary education, and will be speaking on the topic during the dinner. Immediately after the keynote address, Dr. Finnie will be joined by 4 panelists who will wade into the debate further. They are: James Bradshaw, Globe and Mail education reporter, Rick Miner, former President of Seneca College, Joseph Berger, Higher Education Strategy Associates, and Stacey Young, Pathways to Education.

The event promises to be full of debate and another excellent evening for OUSA’s partnership in the sector.

-Alvin Tedjo
OUSA Communications Director

Over the course of the Ontario government’s Reaching Higher Plan, per-student contributions to university operating budgets increased at 5 per cent each year and per-student government funding increased by about 4 per cent each year. It was a substantial and commendable investment, yet across Ontario our students are asking where the resulting quality improvements are. With few answers available, attention has turned toward issues of accountability, cost inflation, and quality metrics for our institutions. At OUSA’s recent General Assembly in Kingston, delegates tasked the Steering Committee with conducting research into and developing new policy on accountability for the fall. One critical part of this work will be on the future of Multi-Year Accountability Agreements (MYAAs).

When they were first negotiated in 2006, MYAAs were meant as strategic documents that would set out institution-specific deliverables for each university in exchange for predictable and increased funding from the provincial government. Now, about five years later, the MYAAs have largely become another in a list of perhaps one hundred different mechanisms the government uses to collect data from our universities.

Students remain supportive though of efforts by the government to hold our institutions accountable for the funds they receive. We continue to hope for an accountability framework in the long-term that would consist of two separate but interrelated components. The first is an individual strategic plan for each institution that holds institutions accountable to openly negotiated objectives and measures, approved by the government and the highest levels of institutional governance, and based on a balance of overarching provincial goals and the local mission and circumstances of the institution. The second is a public system-wide reporting and data collection mechanism that integrates the dozens of different reporting mechanisms currently in use into one place.

Understandably, any significant changes to the accountability framework will have to wait until after the government has clarified its priorities for the system and the funding available to institutions. In the meantime, however, universities are still required to report annually and publically on progress toward a number of system-wide goals through the MYAA report backs. I should stress again that the MYAAs are especially important because the data is publically available, something that, sadly, makes these almost unique among reporting mechanisms. At any rate, these documents provide an important opportunity to hold institutions at least somewhat accountable for pursuing government and student priorities in the short-term. With the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities currently revising the 2010-11 report backs, OUSA has already submitted a number of possible improvements. Here I will highlight two at the very top of the list.

1.       Expand the section on ‘Quality of the Learning Environment’

Right at the end of the MYAA report back sits perhaps the most important section of all: ‘Quality of the Learning Environment.’ Unfortunately, as it stands right now, it is just a big white box that asks institutions to report qualitatively what they’re doing to improve quality. We believe this is insufficient to meet student standards for accountability on the quality of our learning environment. OUSA suggests that this section at least be divided into the three categories that get more directly at what quality means to students: the in-class learning environment, the broader learning environment, and student support services. The government signaled in the Speech from the Throne that quality will be a key part of the forthcoming five-year plan for the sector. Considering then its importance to the government and students, this change would at the very least compel institutions to consider all three of these vital pieces of the broader quality discussion.

2.       Stop borrowing CUDO data and develop government definitions for data reporting

The MYAA report back uses a significant amount of data from Common University Data Ontario (CUDO), a public database created by the universities themselves. Students are concerned, however, that on at least one issue – that of class size – this data does not tell the full story. The following excerpt is from the draft academic plan Queen’s University released last summer:

“The discrepancies in data [on class size] arise because Queen’s strictly follows COU-approved methods for reporting enrolment data that, for example, allow universities to report multiple enrolment sections of the same course as multiple ‘courses’ with fewer than 30 students—even though all the students in these ‘courses’ attend the same lecture in one large theatre given by a single professor. In other words, COU methods permit Ontario universities to appear to have many more small classes than they actually do, underscoring our concern for developing appropriate metrics.”

Clearly there is a need for the government to create its own definition for calculating class size and to take another look across the board at what exactly is being collected. While we’re at it, there are a number of things that should be publically tracked that are not, such as the number of contract faculty employed at our institutions. Data on tenure-track and tenured faculty is collected and released by Statistics Canada, but the Ontario government should demonstrate leadership by working with universities to track all types of faculty, as this is unquestionably related to the quality of the learning environment. It will certainly be difficult, but that is not a reason not to.

Once in a while, we hear stories of someone who is taken aback that student leaders at their institution care about or even know about the MYAAs. This shouldn’t seem strange at all; without our own mechanisms to ensure accountability for our tuition and ancillary fees, we rely on the government and its MYAAs. We look forward to continuing productive discussions with the government on how to improve the accountability framework and collectively work towards a better post-secondary system for our students.

-Alexi White
OUSA Executive Director