OUSA

For a variety of reasons, the conversation on how best to attract international students has been prominent in recent years. Both the federal and provincial governments are developing strategies to attract more international students. Ontario’s most recent target came in the 2010 provincial budget, where the government pledged to increase international student enrolment by 50 per cent over the next five years. OUSA has supported these goals, as international students bring diverse perspectives and viewpoints that enhance the education environment for all.

However, I have always been concerned with the way that these goals end with student recruitment. The students coming to study in Ontario have a wide variety of aspirations, motivations and goals that must continue to be taken into account after they have been recruited. A 2009 survey found that over 51 per cent of international students planned to apply for permanent residence in Canada and 71 per cent indicated that they would seek employment here. This tells me that students are not simply coming to study, but they are also coming to fully experience and become a part of the vibrant international community we have in Ontario. Unfortunately, we don’t always do the best job of accommodating these aspirations.

The Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration currently runs a program called Opportunities Ontario. It is one of Canada’s six provincial nominee programs with an international student stream. Its function is to fast-track applications for permanent resident status through Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC). Through this program, the federal government annually grants a total of 30,000 such opportunities to the provincial and territorial governments. One thousand spots have been allocated to Ontario – less than 1% of the total immigrants to Ontario each year.

While the Opportunities Ontario program is an important step in facilitating the settlement of international graduates, the program is inaccessible to many of these students. At $1,500, the application fee for the program is far above any comparable immigration fee at the provincial or federal level. To put this in perspective, a permanent residence visa costs approximately $500, making the Ontario application fee for the Provincial Nominee Program as much as three full visa applications.

Moreover, Opportunities Ontario does not guarantee gaining permanent residence status, and approximately ten percent of applications are rejected each year. It should come as no surprise then that the Ontario government typically does not fill the 1,000 placements, even though there are over 16,000 current international undergraduate students and a similar number of graduate students. Furthermore, the program is only open to undergraduate students with a pre-existing job offer, shutting out a tremendous number of potential applicants.

In the interest of making the program more accessible, the government recently made changes to Opportunities Ontario’s eligibility requirements, allowing graduate students to apply without a job offer. In this spirit, OUSA recommended in last year’s Going Global submission on international student support that the same step be taken for undergraduates, and the application fee be waived.

Given the immense interest amongst international students in applying for permanent residency and staying in Ontario, it only makes sense that making the pathway from student to resident easier should be a part of Ontario’s internationalization and economic growth strategy. Attracting the best and brightest isn’t just a matter of recruitment; it is also about fostering the aspirations and goals of visiting students. I would submit that Opportunities Ontario is currently not an effective tool to this end, but there is no reason why it couldn’t be, with some minor adjustments.

For more of OUSA’s positions on internationalization, read Going Global: Supporting Ontario’s International Students.

-Chris Martin
Director of Research

Re-posted from the blog of The Agenda with Steve Paiken, who is discussing mental health tonight at 8pm and 11pm on TVO.

When a student is suffering from mental illness, his or her struggle affects all students. Often our friends and classmates don’t turn up to class the next day, don’t hand in an assignment, and/or become absent from our lives.

Over the last several years, students have witnessed that mental health problems are becoming more prevalent on Ontario’s university campuses. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, mental illness affects one in five Canadians; this number is even higher among post-secondary students, where close to one-third of students experience elevated psychological stress. The most recent survey of Ontario universities found that 29 per cent of students reported being unable to function due to depression; 9.4 per cent of students suffered from anxiety disorders; and 6.1 per cent of students seriously considered suicide.

There are a number of reasons why university students experience mental health issues at a higher rate than other demographics, including:

• The typical age of onset of many disorders is 18 to 24, meaning individuals often have their first encounter with mental health issues while in university.
• Many students at university or college are living away from home for the first time in their lives, at a distance from familial networks and social-support programs.
• Universities are demanding, competitive, and high-stress environments, which can trigger anxiety and depression-related illness.
• Many university students are at the age where they are coping with transitional life experiences, including their first experiences with alcohol and drugs, their first romantic relationship, and the first death of a close relative.

Given increasing mental health awareness, it is important for university campuses to have accessible mental health services. OUSA’s recent student survey found that approximately 50 per cent of students use campus mental health services at some point during their studies. Increased demand has strained the existing capacity of counseling services at many of Ontario’s institutions and led to progressively longer wait times for treatment. An inability to promptly access mental health services can lead to an amplification of existing problems, which ultimately has devastating consequences on a personal, academic, and societal level, while driving up system-wide health costs.

Universities and government must work together to tackle this challenge. A positive step, the Ontario government has committed to adding additional mental health workers to college and university campuses through its Open Minds, Healthy Minds youth mental health strategy. Many universities are also instituting fall semester reading weeks, in addition to training professors and other support workers who are in constant contact with students. Additionally, mental health centres typically engage in preventative health promotion and anti-stigma education.

These steps are important, but more must be done system-wide. For example, many students suffering with mental illness reduce their course loads to part-time status. Unfortunately, students must then begin repaying their student loans, adding stress to an otherwise fragile situation. Extending interest relief would be a relatively low-cost initiative that could go a long way.

Mental health issues are often complex, meaning that they require complex solutions. Direct support and intervention must be provided by high-quality services, the student experience must be reformed to reduce undue stress on those who are in difficult situations, and attitudes must change to reduce stigma associated with mental illness. Universities and students are already pursuing these goals; it’s time that the Ontario government equips universities and its students with the tools needed to fight the issue of mental illness more rigorously.

-Sean Madden
OUSA President

Welcome back everyone! As the holidays come to an end and students go back to class, OUSA is gearing up for a very busy term ahead. The next month will see the launch of the Ontario government’s tuition grant program, and we will be working hard with our student associations to get eligible students to apply. In addition to the hundreds of phone calls and emails, our website has been getting thousands of hits on its www.ousa.ca/tuitiongrant page where we outline the program’s details.

OUSA is also looking forward to a number of events on the horizon. The 8th annual Partners in Higher Education Dinner is tentatively scheduled for the end of March. Last year former Premier Bob Rae and Professor Ross Finnie spoke at the sold out event. This year we are looking at new locations as we have outgrown (yet again) our current space, and want to have seats available for all to wish to attend. Details and Save-The-Date coming soon!

The McMaster Students Union and the McMaster Association of Part-Time Students are hosting OUSA’s Spring General Assembly in Hamilton, Ontario from March 9th to 11th. In keeping with OUSA’s open door policies, this is the first public announcement of the conference for those wishing to attend. After a successful webcast of the Fall General Assembly’s plenary meeting, OUSA is looking to repeat the exercise in Hamilton. An agenda will be posted within a month of the conference. The policy papers scheduled for this assembly are Credit Transfer, Student Health, Rural & Northern Students, and Mature Students. Also for the first time, OUSA will be hosting volunteer awards ceremony for its students, recognizing the tireless efforts of OUSA’s greatest volunteers.

Finally, OUSA will be looking to submit its government submissions on a new tuition framework and the 2012 Ontario Budget in the next few months, and student consultations and research is currently under way in earnest here at OUSA. Look for them in the months ahead.

As the blog roars its way back into 2012, check back often as an exciting schedule of blogs are coming your way. With all the excitement, announcements, events and conferences, it’s going to be an exciting term for sure.

-Alvin Tedjo
OUSA Communications Director

For the past year, OUSA has been working actively to begin a robust discussion on Ontario’s tuition framework, with an eye to the implementation of a new one in the upcoming year. Most of our lobbying and policy work strongly emphasizes fairness for students, whether through regulating payment processes, flat-fee tuition or, the topic I’m about to delve into – per-credit pricing.

An ideal tuition system would charge students for the courses they are taking fairly and at a standard rate, regardless of program designation. Unfortunately, for many Ontario universities, this is not a reality.  As can be expected, many degree programs offer students the opportunity to enrol in courses outside of their discipline. For example, students in Engineering almost always are expected to take a few classes in the Liberal Arts in order to expand educational horizons and foster interdisciplinary understanding. There is, however, an unfortunate consequence that arises in this otherwise normal educational practice. Due to the fact that there are widely different costs for professional and general arts and science degrees, students in professional programs end up paying more for the same class than their classmates. For example, this would occur when a student from a professional program (e.g., business, architecture or engineering) enrols in a humanities, social sciences or science class. An engineering student that needs to take an elective class in the humanities or sciences (a history class, for example) will pay the engineering rate for the history class, whereas a student enrolled in history as their main discipline will pay the humanities rate, which is considerably lower.

Furthermore, it is a problem that has become worse over time. Due to the fact that tuition have been allowed to increase at double the rate in professional programs than in traditional arts and science programs, the engineer will pay more for an elective course than their peer in the humanities every year. If tuition is supposed to be in any way reflective of the cost of an education, the practice of charging two students taking the same class different tuition rates and differently paced increases must be re-examined.

The solution? OUSA asks that in the new tuition framework, the provincial government require that program rates for elective classes remain consistent with the program that the course is being taken in – put another way, institutions should be required to charge on a per-credit basis. The disparity in rates can foster a system of inequality in which a student is unfairly punished financially when their programs have certain elective requirements to take classes outside their particular area of study. A fair system would charge the student a rate for the class they are taking, not the program they are in. It is, after all, the holiday season.

-Alicia Ali
Vice-President (Education)
McMaster Students Union

The building anticipation towards the roll-out of the Ontario Tuition Grant in January has led to a great deal of interest amongst students regarding who will be eligible and how they might apply. OUSA has received hundreds of calls and emails lately on these two matters. In all instances, we have communicated the eligibility criteria and implementation plans that are currently known. As more students and parents have called in, it has become increasingly apparent that certain groups of high-need students are feeling left out by the criteria. In particular, we are concerned that the requirement for grant recipients to have completed secondary school within the last four years will make the tuition grant less useful to students with children and Aboriginal students. Students with children may not have the financial or personal support to juggle caring for a dependant, school and work responsibilities oftentimes waiting until they are mature students to enter post-secondary studies. Similarly, there are many reasons why Aboriginal students may delay entry to college or university, including:

• Many bands are unable to fund all students applying for post-secondary funding in a given year, and consequently, students may be required to wait a number of years for financial support;
• Aboriginal students living in rural and northern communities are less likely to live within commuting distance of an institution, and as teenagers may be unprepared to relocate far from home communities;
• Aboriginal students are more likely to drop-out of secondary school, and return to their studies at a later date.

The latest evidence of these trends came today in new article by Statistics Canada on the demographic characteristics of those who delay entry into post-secondary education. Taken from longitudinal data available from the Youth in Transition Survey, the study concludes that Aboriginal students, first-generation students, males, rural students, and students caring for children all took longer to enter their first-post-secondary program than traditional students. Some of the key findings are highlighted in the chart below.

Aboriginal students and students with dependants report the longest delays to entry between finishing secondary school and entering post-secondary studies. Moreover, many other groups OUSA and others have identified as facing barriers to participation in post-secondary education, including first generation students, rural students, and low-income students, also delay entry to post-secondary studies substantially, making the time limitation on eligibility for the tuition grant problematic from an access perspective.

Previous research has also demonstrated these trends. One study indicates that as many as half of the Aboriginal students are over the age of 24. The new grant would not be available to these students, which is unfortunate considering that the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal student participation has widened considerably in recent years. Currently, only 9 per cent of the Ontario Aboriginal population aged 25-64 has a university degree, compared with 26 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population. Students with dependents are also underrepresented, attending university at 20 per cent the rate of their peers, with many citing inadequate financial assistance as a barrier to participation. Researchers estimate that even after qualifying for the maximum available OSAP assistance, a sole-support student with a single dependant has an unmet financial need of in excess of $10,000 for an 8-month academic year due mostly to unrealistic childcare allowances.

Given that the new Ontario Tuition Grant is the one of the largest investments in public financial assistance in history, students believe it only makes sense to ensure that funds reach the students that need it the most. OUSA strongly recommends that some flexibility in the time-constraints and full-time status required for grant eligibility be extended to students who self-identify as Aboriginal or who have young children in the same way that OSAP makes accommodations for students with disabilities. Using some of the dedicated resources to make improvements to the Aboriginal Bursary and Childcare Bursary to achieve the same ends would be another way to meet this need. Given the small size of both of these groups, the cost of extending eligibility would not be large, particularly compared to the enormous economic and social benefits of ensuring access to higher education for some of our most vulnerable youth.

-Chris Martin
Director of Research

-Laura Pin
Research Analyst

Premier McGuinty with students at Queen's Park

Last week was probably the busiest week of the year for OUSA. From Monday to Wednesday, we held our annual Student Advocacy Conference at Queen’s Park where students met with Members of Provincial Parliament to discuss post-secondary education and the priorities of students. Throughout the week, over 75 meetings occurred to discuss our three main advocacy priorities: the new tuition framework and grant; abolishing flat-fee tuition; and enhancing teaching quality.

Affordability and quality of post-secondary education are top of mind issues for students across the Province, and it was reassuring to hear from Members of all parties that these are shared priorities. The introduction of the new Ontario Tuition Grant, the development of a new tuition framework for September and new regulations to ensure institutions charge students fairly dominated much of the discussion. How to improve and incentivize teaching quality at the undergraduate level was also an area of concern for much of the Legislature, and there was considerable interest in our proposal to establish Ontario Teaching Chairs and embed quality ambassadors in academic departments, an idea supported by faculty and administrators as well.

There were also a number of meetings with Ministers and opposition critics in which specific proposals or issues were discussed, including student mental health, support for Aboriginal students, international student employment and health insurance, rural and northern access, high school curriculum and guidance counselling.

On Thursday, OUSA hosted a roundtable discussion with government and stakeholders from across the post-secondary sector on our recent Rising Costs report. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Joy Mighty of Queen’s University who led us in a stimulating dialogue about concrete ways to improve quality and cost sustainability of university education in Ontario. Among the topics of discussion were instructor rewards and incentives, experiential learning and pedagogical support.

With all of this now behind us, the dwindling days leading up to the holiday break will be focused on preparing for the roll-out of the Ontario Tuition Grant and getting ready for our winter campaigns and activities. I want to thank all of the student representatives, stakeholders and MPPs who took time last week to engage with OUSA and work together to build a stronger post-secondary education system for Ontario’s students.

-Sam Andrey
OUSA Executive Director

Over the past week, OUSA has been engaged in our annual Student Advocacy Week in Toronto, where students met with politicians across all parties and areas of the province. One of our top lobby priorities is for a portion of growth funding to be apportioned off to support the creation of Ontario Teaching Chairs.

The concept of Teaching Chairs was borne out of the success that campuses experienced with the installation of Research Chairs, which was announced in the 2005 Ontario Budget and rolled out on campuses thereafter. There is increasing recognition that research is being incentivized above teaching quality both at the government, institutional and faculty levels. While enrollment has skyrocketed over the past decade, instructional loads have been declining. The practice of professors “buying out” teaching responsibilities to conduct more research is common. Investing in Teaching Chairs would allow the government to begin equalizing this imbalance by demonstrating that the province of Ontario values excellence in teaching. Such an approach incentivizes and encourages quality, empowering current leaders in teaching and learning to share best practice and educate others on teaching through example. Rather than mandating a top-down approach to the improvement of teaching quality, teaching chairs provide a bottom-up approach to quality improvement, allowing for the maintenance of institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

So what are Teaching Chairs and how will they benefit students?

In the context of tuition prices that are rising well above that of inflation, students are left with the desire to see a higher return on their investment in terms of the classroom experience, and are eager to see the educational experience evolve beyond simple one-way lectures.

Teaching chairs would be individuals responsible for spearheading programs to improve the quality of teaching and learning at a given post-secondary institution, acting as ambassadors for quality improvements. Additionally, teaching chairs would be responsible for advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning, advancing and discovering innovations and new pedagogies that would help Ontario provide high quality learning experiences to future generations of undergraduates. As Teaching Chairs, these professors would be relieved of traditional research responsibilities so they could focus efforts on these objectives. Teaching chairs could engage in a wide range of activities on campus to further the quality agenda, for example, fostering relationships with Centres for Teaching Excellence to ensure that best practices make their way into classrooms, provide mentorship to instructors, and interact directly with students to meet their needs.

In recent years, student to faculty ratio has been viewed as one of the more useful ways of measuring teaching quality. This is of course only one part of the picture, as teaching is a more complex endeavor than simply the number of professors in a classroom. Faculty themselves indicated this in a recent report published by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, indicating that class size and course design and pedagogy were both factors that affected quality in large classes. Teaching Chairs are just one way to address the pedagogy in Ontario university classrooms. For this reason, OUSA has been spending the past week advocating the implementation of teaching chairs and will continue to do so in the coming months.

Natalie Cockburn
VP Education – University of Waterloo, Federation of Students
VP Finance – Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance

Today OUSA is in the midst of our three-day Student Advocacy Conference, where we have had the opportunity to meet with many MPPs from all three parties, and raise student concerns about the upcoming tuition framework and quality of education. We have been excited to receive so many positive responses to our concerns and look forward to continuing to meet with MPPs over the next two days to continue to bring a student perspective to Queen’s Park.

Today is also the 22^nd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. On December 6^th 1989, a gunman at Montreal’s École Polytechnique separated male and female engineering students, before firing on and killing 14 female students and wounding 13 others in what is described by the CBC as “Canada’s worst mass shooting.” The shooter’s suicide letter described how he hated feminists, and the students who were killed were specifically targeted because they were women.  December 6^th has since been designated a National Day of Action and Remembrance on Violence Against Women.

Since the massacre, there have been many initiatives designed to ensure that our post-secondary institutions are safe places for women. Some of these include the development of a Women’s Campus Safety funding envelope, the creation of Women’s Centres on campuses, and the creation of the White Ribbon Campaign raising awareness of violence against women. However, there still remains a great deal of work to be done. According to SACHA, more than half of all women over 16 report experiencing physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives, and 80 per cent of female undergraduates at Canadian universities said they had been victims of violence in a dating relationship. Sometimes funds earmarked for the Women’s Campus Safety envelope are redirected for other initiatives deemed higher priority. And in Ontario today, only 7 per cent of licensed engineers are women.

Ontario universities have made progress towards achieving gender equity on campuses, and creating campus environments that are safe places for women to work and study. But today is a particularly fitting day to remember that more needs to be done to make sure we never experience another École Polytechnique again.

-Laura Pin
OUSA Research Analyst

Making a decision about which university to attend can be an overwhelming choice for many prospective students. There is an abundant number and diversity of options available to students. As the Ontario government embarks on site selection and the development of regulations for new satellite campuses, I want to share my own experience in deciding to attend a satellite campus.

When I was trying to choose which university to attend, I narrowed down my options by location. I knew I wanted to still live at home and keep my job while attending university. Trent University which has a satellite campus in the Durham region was the perfect choice. The first tip for new satellite campuses is location, location, location. The location of a new satellite campus should be ideal for commuter students: access to transportation is essential. Also, if possible, the satellite campus should be close enough to the main campus to facilitate inter-university sharing of resources. Since Trent University’s Peterborough campus is located only about 45 minutes away from the Oshawa satellite campus, students are often able to take classes both on both campuses as well as share resources like library materials.

Another important consideration is community relationships. Trent University in Oshawa is fortunate to have an amazing relationship with the City of Oshawa. Trent Oshawa students are able to use Oshawa community facilities and public transportation at a discounted rate. In the initial stages of establishing a satellite campus, there are often fewer academic resources and support services available to students at the satellite campus. Therefore creating strong relationships and networks with the community are significant in creating an environment where students can be successful.

In my first two years at Trent in Oshawa, we did not have our own separate student association. As a result, we did not have full access to a health plan that suited Trent in Oshawa students’ needs, and we did not host events that were Oshawa-specific. All students who attend university want to get a phenomenal education in an environment that is academically and socially stimulating. The student association at any campus are people dedicated to improving the university experience of students, taking it to the next level. When Trent in Oshawa established their own student association, students were offered access to a health and dental benefit plan, access to a gym membership within the community, and discounted public transit. Also, the student association helped facilitate the establishment of student clubs, and co-hosted many events, enabling the campus community develop and flourish. Therefore, from the very beginning of developing a satellite campus, including a student association is vital for creating a strong sense of community among students.

Another reason why I chose to attend a satellite campus was that, despite being a smaller campus, Trent in Oshawa offered an opportunity to complete a full history degree in Oshawa. Trent Oshawa is a small campus, but able to offer a significant number of courses in many different areas of study. As a history major, I have been able to take business courses, anthropology courses, and even biology courses, all at the satellite campus. Complete program development is vital in new satellite campuses, as students want to be able to attend the satellite campus and not feel as though they are missing out on a richer university education. Often students need to travel to the main campus to complete their degree, as satellite campuses may not offer an adequate number of upper year courses. Another issue is professor retention: at satellite campuses it can be difficult to develop strong relationships with professors, because many of them only stay for a year or two. Having professors teach for longer periods of time at satellite campuses would be ideal for students, and also enable the professors to better contribute to the academic programming of the satellite.

Overall, the idea of creating more satellite campuses is important for students who are seeking the small university atmosphere in more areas in Ontario. However, it is important to bear in mind that students also need a great academic and social experience at university. There is a strong need for student services that are comparable to those offered at the main campus. I am really happy that I chose to attend Trent University in Oshawa. I have been given the opportunity to study at home while continuing my part-time job and complete my entire degree in Oshawa without transferring to another location. If future satellite campus development follows the tips outlined above with a focus on adequately supporting students, I am sure that it will prove to be a valuable way of offering post-secondary education in Ontario.

-Kelly Vanleyden
President of the Trent in Oshawa Student Association

In England, Australia, and New Zealand, they have the Blues.  In the United States they have Today’s Top VIII Award and here at Queen’s we call them Academic All-Stars.  Every university has students that are recognized for their excellence in their studies and their performance on the field/rink/court.  Athletics are a significant part of university culture and serve to engage alumni, surrounding communities and the broader public in the institution. One of the most iconic images of Queen’s spirit is tricolour-painted students cheering on our football team. However, university athletics aren’t just about the varsity athletes. The athletic facilities on campus are shared between the varsity teams and innumerable athletic clubs, intramural sports, and students looking to shed the freshman 15. Given their widespread use and necessity, campus athletics should be funded in a similar manner to libraries, cafeterias, and student support services.

Universities are publically subsidized institutions that not only educate our students but also foster their success in a number of ways outside the classroom. Whether imparting employment, health, or social skills, universities play a role in the personal development of students.  There is significant debate, therefore, around how athletic facilities are funded.  Should athletic and recreational centres be funded by the government?  Privately?  By students through their tuition?  By students through ancillary fees?  Currently, the vast majority of Ontario Universities levy a student fee to subsidize their athletic facilities and programs.  At Queen’s University, that fee helps fund everything from athletic clubs, facilities, maintenance, and for new equipment to help students burn those exam week calories. Fundamentally, athletic programs are critical for a healthy, spirited campus and should be recognized the government with some form of financial support.

The problem when framing this debate is that most people instantly leap to the assumption that athletic program expenditures are frivolous; new funding will only pay for better-mowed rugby fields and  better equipment for varsity teams. This assumption, however, misses the point and clouds the discussion.  There are numerous studies that connect a healthy lifestyle of balanced exercise and diet as critical to brain development and a healthy mind. Furthermore, the collegiality of intramurals and attending sports event at one’s school goes beyond developing a healthy individual and provides further benefit to the community.

Therefore, it can be seen that athletics are a part of student success. OUSA firmly believes all aspects of student life should be funded through operating budgets in addition to ancillary fees.  Ancillary fees should be assessed to fund programs that wouldn’t exist without student-wide contribution (peer support centres, charity activities), in order to provide non-essential student services (restaurants, bars, retail outlets), to fund student advocacy, or to provide student-wide services at a less expensive price (Bus programs).  Athletic programs on the other hand are essential and have external revenue such as alumni donations.  They are a critical and fundamental service.

Universities should not have to look to students to fund new facilities and maintenance of athletics centres.  As a society we cannot lament the unhealthy lifestyles of our students if we continue to put the onus on them to pay enormous athletic fees to have access to areas to exercise. We should focus on enabling students, providing them options, and not hampering their bank accounts in order to fund athletic services that should be available anyway.

-Kieran Slobodin
AMS VP University Affairs