PRESS RELEASE
March 13th, 2025
New Research Report: OUSA Publishes Data on Student Affordability
TORONTO, ON – The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) is excited to announce the release of the first of two reports sharing the results of its biennial Ontario Undergraduate Student Survey (OUSS). The OUSS received over 3,950 undergraduate and professional student responses across OUSA’s member schools.
The report, Affordability: Results from the 2022 Ontario Undergraduate Student Survey, sheds light on financial concerns for post-secondary students from OUSA’s member institutions. The data reveals trends on how students are funding their education, how concerned they are about having enough money to complete their education, and how burdensome they anticipate their post-graduation debt will be.
In the peak of a cost-of-living crisis, affordability is a primary concern for students. Results from the report indicate that almost 80% of students were worried about having enough money to complete their education, and just over half these students attributed their concern to less OSAP funding. As well, international students are facing significant financial pressures, with just under two-thirds finding it increasingly difficult to afford their education in Ontario.
“The coalescing of the poor economic climate and changes to financial aid policy have unfairly impacted and burdened students who have limited sources of income,” said Octavia Andrade-Dixon, Manager of Research and Policy at OUSA and co-author of the report. “These impacts are worse for low-income, first-generation, racialized, and rural and northern students, which shows us that affordability barriers to higher education are maintaining cycles of economic immobility.”
This report also provides information about student employment trends, both over the summer and in-study. Approximately two-thirds of students had a full-time summer job in 2022 and cited paying for their education as their top reason for working. For both summer and in-study employment, students were more likely to be working in a field unrelated to their academic program, signalling a shift in priorities from building professional experience for career prospects to simply making ends meet.
The OUSS provides important insight into the concerns students have and are important to inform systemic change efforts. OUSA will continue to collect and use this data to inform our policy and advocacy efforts and we encourage all post-secondary stakeholders to look to the OUSS and other similar data to better understand student needs and concerns.
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OUSA represents the interests of 160,000 professional and undergraduate, full-time and part-time university students at nine student associations across Ontario. Our vision is for an accessible, affordable, accountable, and high quality post-secondary education in Ontario.
Tiffany Li Wu
Manager of Operations & Communications
Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance