OUSA attends the new grant announcement
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President’s Message:
Welcome back to a brand new year everyone! I hope that everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. We at OUSA have come back refreshed and ready for what is already shaping up to be an exciting month for Ontario’s students. The official launch of the Government’s Ontario tuition grant was welcome news to many of Ontario’s students eager for relief from tuition costs. I encourage interested students to check their eligibility on either the OUSA website or the Government’s own ontario.ca/30off. OUSA will be doing its best to promote this opportunity to eligible students and to help people address any questions or concerns that they may have about the grant. As well, acknowledging that this program is just a part of comprehensive student assistance in the province, OUSA will continue to work with the government on improving access for all willing and qualified students in Ontario.
The government’s announcement is an important move towards enhancing access for dependent students in Ontario who might not receive parental assistance or who have found themselves dissuaded by the sticker shock of an education. This type of programming in the spotlight sparks the equally important discussion around student access, persistence and success and as OUSA gears up for its annual Blue Chair awareness event we are eager to carry on that discussion with our students. Blue Chair is a great time to check our priorities with students and raise awareness about the issues that might be impacting student success or access.
The end of the holiday season signals the beginning of the research and policy season, and paper authors are setting themselves to the task of turning the General Assembly’s priorities into the policy positions required for effective advocacy in the areas of credit transfer, mature students, rural and northern students and student health. The season for resolutions is at hand as well, and while I probably won’t make the gym as often I’d like, I think I speak for everyone here when I reaffirm our resolve to do our best on behalf of you in the year to come.
-Sean Madden
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Happy December everyone! OUSA has just wrapped up our most successful Student Advocacy Conference yet, having had 75 meetings at Queen’s Park over the course of 4 days last week. I want to thank everyone involved with the conference for the many productive conversations that were had with MPPs around tuition and quality; your recognition of post-secondary education as critical to the success of the province and its youth is encouraging, and I applaud you for your willingness to engage on these issues.
OUSA also played host to a roundtable with many sector partners last week that drew upon our recently released examination of costing and funding pressures within our universities. The discussion offered great perspectives on how to preserve and enhance quality within post-secondary education while understanding the challenges facing students, institutions and governments alike. We hope that we can continue the same spirit of collaboration and innovation moving forward as we all work to deliver the best experience for Ontario’s students.
As things wind down at OUSA and our members, I want to send my most sincere thanks to all we work with, and to extend best wishes for the holiday season. We’ll see you all in the new year, where I look forward to getting back to work with renewed vigor.
-Sean Madden
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This has been another very busy month for OUSA. The provincial election was an exciting start, and it was great to see OUSA’s efforts during the campaign come to fruition. We’re looking forward to working with recently appointed Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities Glen Murray, as well as offering our thoughts on the new Liberal government’s election promise; the 30 percent tuition grant for full-time dependent students coming from a household earning less than $160,000. Post-secondary education issues were prevalent throughout the election and our own web traffic, particularly the 10,000 visits to our platform comparison on Election Day and the results of our omnibus polling, indicating that all of the parties were right in making post-secondary education a focus.
Moving forward into October, we were presented with many opportunities to forward the student agenda around tuition issues, quality and credit transfer with the new government and other sector partners. We were also fortunate to be asked to speak at several conferences, including one at my alma mater where changing notions of student engagement and learning were discussed to excellent effect. OUSA staff also spoke at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario’s conference on financial literacy. The latest issue our magazine, Educated Solutions, is hot off the presses this week as well, offering a timely exploration of affordability through a variety of perspectives.
And of course, OUSA is just coming off of its semi-annual General Assembly, an opportunity for our members to get hands on with the priorities for the upcoming year. This fall’s conference was hosted quite ably by the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance and allowed students the chance to view our annual report and financials and determine present and future policy and advocacy. The work of our student advocates throughout the Province has resulted in a strong focus, and we look forward to working with the government to carry out this vision.
-Sean Madden
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Here we are, Ontario’s provincial election day, and I am very pleased with both the efforts made by all during this election to keep post secondary education an issue and with the success of that effort. Politicians, stakeholder groups and students have filled all forms of media with our concerns and initiatives around post-secondary education; further, its prominence in last Tuesday’s leaders’ debate speaks to the importance that voters place on education, a fact echoed in the results of the OUSA/CSA public opinion poll conducted last month.
Significant participation at the advance polls on our members’ campuses since September 20th shows that students are paying attention to this election, and indicate that the parties may be rewarded with a strong student answer to their diverse educational, and broader, priorities.
I’m very proud of the work that the CSA and OUSA have been doing to inform and mobilize the youth vote, as well as those voters who are concerned about the impact of education on future social and economic realities in Ontario. The creativity and energy that OUSA’s Steering Committee, Home Office and, of course, our tireless volunteers, have shown is pretty awe inducing and I am sincerely thankful for everyone’s work.
As we move forward post October 6th, I look forward to working with all in the sector to make campaign promises into realities for our students. Ontarians’ desire for an accountable, affordable, accessible and high quality education system has been clearly expressed and acknowledged by those who can make change happen; there is no more exciting or humbling time to be where I am at.
I encourage those of you that have not yet informed yourself as a voter to make use of the many resources, including those from the OUSA and CSA, made available to you. Please check out itsyourvote.ca or ousa.ca for more information on the upcoming election, and don’t forget to cast your ballot before the polls close at 9pm tonight!
-Sean Madden
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August has been a very busy month as OUSA continues its preparation for the provincial election; printers have been printing, film crews have been filming and web masters have been web mastering. The results have been fantastic so far and we’re very excited to have now launched the campaign province-wide. I have big hopes for student engagement in this election and everyone here at OUSA is working towards giving our students the resources they need to vote. Eliminating barriers to student voting is on everyone’s radar this year, and we’re pleased to see the efforts that institutions, student groups and Elections Ontario are making towards motivating voters and easing processes. Keep checking back with OUSA and the College Student Alliance at itsyourvote.ca for all the up-to-date information about the parties, the priorities and the process in the upcoming month. Keep an eye on your own campuses as well for OUSA materials and your own association’s chances to get involved in the campaign.
The election means some announcements for post-secondary education too, and we were pleased to see education and financial assistance reforms remaining a priority in the parties’ campaigns. Announcements around more realistic parental contributions in OSAP calculations from the Progressive Conservatives and more relaxed repayment conditions for recent graduates who find work in the not-for-profit sector from the Liberal Party were welcome news for students. Having our universities and colleges as a focus in campaign discussions reflects the importance of our higher education system to Ontario’s economic and social health.
Going forward, September itself always promises to be an exciting time of year as students new and old make their way to our campuses after an all too brief summer. I’m looking forward to the energy and buzz that accompanies their return; having Laurier full again reminds me of why we do what we do at OUSA, all of Ontario’s student associations, our institutions and governments, and means that we get to see the many projects that our Home Office and members have worked on take off.
Til next time,
-Sean Madden
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Here we are in August already, with just the one month between ourselves and the beginning of the fall semester. OUSA has been busy preparing for the coming school year, not to mention the election, with renewed vigour. After last month’s Strategic Planning Conference, the executive team has occupied ourselves with turning those conference outcomes into our Action Plan for the year ahead. Our wonderful home office staff have been preparing communication, research and advocacy plans to reach this year’s ambitious goals, and I think it’s important for all of our members to know how hard they have been working to make our dreams for OUSA come true.
This was a busy month of meetings as well, with myself and the Executive Director having productive discussions with many in the sector, the public service and the media. Steering Committee as a whole has been engaged in building those partnerships and marshalling those resources on their respective campuses in order to best serve our membership in the coming year, and the groundwork for the many exciting projects coming down the chute this year is progressing nicely.
OUSA continues to strengthen relationships with its partners and members, working closely with the College Student Alliance on our election strategy and through partner discussions at the recent Canadian Alliance of Student Association’s Policy and Strategy Conference. Many partners from across the country came together over two days of the conference to share best practices and ideas; the resulting commitments to work together wherever possible is personally exciting to me, and left us inspired by the desire of all in the sector to work on behalf of students in any way that we can.
Moving forward with next week’s joint elections workshop with the CSA, OUSA is excited to have the opportunity to meet with many of the people who will be working to inform and empower student voters. The workshop will allow these dedicated volunteers some media and campaign training, a forum to share ideas and some material resources in order to best accomplish our goal of engaging students with their education and taking student issues to the polls. Our responsibility to our members is to provide voters with every party’s ideas around education, so look forward to a variety of resources around the importance of education and its place in the political sphere in the coming months.
Having completed our Action Plan, and after seeing our projects beginning to firm up, I can say that I’m very excited to have solidified our mandate for the year. This action plan contains concrete goals and deliverables in order to guide our activities and to keep us accountable to ourselves and to our membership; we feel that it is respectful of our resources and flexible but ultimately challenges OUSA to perform at a high level. In this challenging and exciting year we need to demand the best of ourselves, our partners and the system that we seek to better, this plan will be our reminder and measure of that commitment.
‘Til next time
-Sean Madden
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Sometimes my job has me tremendously excited about the energy, the possibilities and the great people I get to surround myself with. Somehow the entirety of June, and the first week of July, has been a whirlwind of those times. Standing out was this week’s Strategic Planning Conference when the OUSA Steering Committee and Home Office set themselves to producing this year’s organizational direction and priorities. The brainstorming and planning sessions provided a clear assessment of our organizational strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, and gave us a clear action plan moving forward.
Addressing student concerns surrounding quality and value in their education will be the number one priority of OUSA in the coming year, along with identifying practices within the system that serve as examples of how to best engage students and contribute to their success. Issues of tuition, ancillary fees, accountability, student health, credit transfer, system growth and the continued broadening of student demographics will be explored through OUSA’s policy and advocacy activities this year as well.
These efforts, along with the election, will provide opportunities for OUSA to demonstrate our place as leaders in the post-secondary education sector… but not without having to work diligently to reach out to our membership. Student engagement will be essential in the upcoming Provincial Election, both in terms of mobilizing the student vote and in making education a priority in the campaigns. Much of the discussion this past week has focused around OUSA’s opportunities as a non-partisan mobilizer and informer of the student vote. Our campaigns, communication and activities will be aimed at empowering students to shape their educations through the election. Expect to see our election website to be full of information about the parties, their platforms and opportunities to get involved in addition to help with voting.
We need our membership to shape the direction of OUSA as well. Discussions about effective strategies for membership engagement, participation in OUSA’s research, priorities and advocacy have left us focused on continuing to draw upon the members who enable our work. This is critically important as we move forward with discussions around quality and determining the elements most important to students.
StratCon was the icing on the cake that was a busy June as well. Continuing to work with our partners and the sector stakeholders has led to some productive discussions and important projects to move forward. Student health, important infrastructure investments, raising the profile of student financial assistance and the continuing debate on the value of a university education were just some of the items dominating the PSE agenda in June. OUSA is always welcoming the chance to raise the profile of education and to enhance the experience of university for everyone; this last month did not disappoint.
-Sean Madden
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The busy month of March has come and gone, but what has been accomplished will continue to guide the rest of this year.
The past four weeks have been packed full of excitement and hard work with our Spring General Assembly March 11th – 13thhosted by the Alma Mater Society at Queen’s University in Kingston, the announcement of the provincial budget on March 29th, and followed by OUSA’s annual Partners in Higher Education Dinner on March 31st.
The Spring General Assembly provided another opportunity for student representatives to come together and engage in the important policy decisions and drive the direction of our activities. From the conference, we have passed a revised policy on Ancillary Fees, Aboriginal Students, and Student Success. Thank you to all of the delegates who performed an incredible role during that weekend, but continue to serve as delegates of their students throughout the year.
With the announcement of the provincial budget and 60,000 new post-secondary spaces over the next five years, students of Ontario can look forward to our universities and colleges opening their doors to more students and the priority of access to education continuing to remain an area of importance. Students are very interested in the commitment of the government to renegotiate and rethink the current Multi-Year Accountability Agreements with universities, and we remain committed to contributing in whatever way we can.
To close, I want to extend the sincere appreciation OUSA has for the commitment and collaboration this year from our partners and stakeholders in the sector. The year’s Partners Dinner provided for an evening of celebration and recognition of the incredibly significant work that we do together all year. It is this exceptionally important work and willingness for collaboration that continues to inspire us to strive for the kind of higher education system that our students and the Province of Ontario deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
