Ford’s recent changes to OSAP’s funding model will ensure that middle- and lower-class families stay out of university — unless they want to be in decades of debt after they finish their degree.
On Feb. 12, the provincial government announced their plans to end Ontario’s tuition freeze and restructure the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Though the government says that the shifts were necessary to “protect post-secondary students’ access to the education they need to launch successful careers,” the details of their plans seem to convey the opposite.
Firstly, the province intends to allow post-secondary institutions to begin raising their tuition costs once again following a seven-year-long tuition freeze. Tuition may increase by two per cent per year for three years. After three years, tuition may increase up to two per cent or the average rate of inflation across three years, with the deciding factor being which number is lesser.
Though the government praises the plans for “maintaining one of the lowest rates of tuition increase in Canada,” it is obvious that any cost hikes can make a university education inaccessible to many.
You might think that the province would consider avenues to help support post-secondary students financially following these tuition increases. Instead, they chose to make matters worse.
Another key aspect of Ford’s plan is to make massive cuts to OSAP, a government-funded service that countless post-secondary students rely on to help ease the burden of tuition and textbook costs, housing accommodations and/or general living expenses. OSAP provides students with a mixture of grants and loans depending on their education costs and household income, among other factors.
Currently, students applying for OSAP can have grants encompass a maximum of 85 per cent of their funding package, with the rest being loans that must be paid back to the government in installments, with interest beginning to build six months after graduation.
Under Ford’s plans, however, students will only be allowed to have a maximum of 25 per cent of their funding package offered as grants.
These drastic changes mean that students will be spending more on tuition while being forced to take out larger loans — all so that they can graduate into an incredibly rigorous job market with the looming pressures of debt on their shoulders.
It is safe to say that the provincial government is doing anything but “ensuring education remains accessible for future generations.” The changes show a clear disregard for students and their pathways to stability and security.
It is undoubtable that Ford’s plans for post-secondary education will deter those coming from lower income households to explore university as a career pathway, given that Ford is creating an environment where they would have to complete their schooling under the stress of debt and financial instability.
Amidst the cuts, Ford’s bountiful advice to students was that they should stop picking “basket-weaving courses.” Here, Ford is implying that students should not pursue “useless” degrees and instead invest in schooling that will prime them for “in-demand jobs.”
Ford’s response is ridiculous for a plethora of reasons, but the most prevalent one is that viewing higher education as a fast-track to an “in-demand” career doesn’t alter the fact that these changes will ensure that it takes mounds of debt to even get through one’s education in the first place. If Ford wants Ontario to produce workers in healthcare or STEM, for example, would he not want to incentivize them to enter post-secondary education in the first place?
Clearly, Ford is more than okay with only allowing privileged students into “in-demand” careers and leaving everyone else to fight over dwindling entry-level jobs.
His response also amplifies the Conservative Party’s lack of regard for the Arts and Humanities sectors, which are often characterized as “useless” degrees. It is integral to note that these sectors have less demand not because they are useless but because they are de-valued by neoliberal actors who believe that critical thinking skills are not valuable to Canadian citizens — which is quite convenient for the Conservative Party, as it will ensure they stay in power.
Ford’s plans will not only lead to underrepresentation across disciplines, but it will also reify the university as a place solely meant for the privileged. Thus, if those with less financial privilege choose to attend university despite having to navigate the financial mess Ford has placed them in, it is likely that they will continue to face the feelings of imposter syndrome that working-class students already report as they navigate higher education.
Class privilege is deeply ingrained in education. When students come from families who have had the privilege to attend university and gain social mobility, they are often primed on the proper ways of speaking in an “elite” environment such as the university, and they likely do not see education as a financial burden, but a natural path to furthering one’s career. However, students from working-class families are often less familiar with the sets of behaviours and practices that are unspoken but expected in a university environment. Speaking anecdotally, feeling as though you are existing outside of the high-class social expectations of academia can be incredibly isolating and simply exhausting. A user on Reddit put it best when articulating the lack of belonging they feel in academia as a first-generation university student:
“Every day I feel like I accidentally slipped through admissions and someone’s going to figure out I don’t actually belong here. Everyone else seems so confident, using big words, already knowing how things work. Meanwhile I’m still figuring out basic stuff, like how to email professors without sounding like an idiot.”
The Reddit thread aligns with researcher Jo Phelan’s findings that coming from a lower-class background is a significant contributing factor in promoting imposter syndrome among university students.
With Ford’s new plans, the university could become a much more exclusionary space — a space that embodies Phelan’s sentiments that post-secondary environments have the capacity to be more limiting than uplifting based on one’s class location:
“Although higher education is generally viewed as a major conduit for upward social mobility […] the university system, with its ability to give or deny access to power and privilege, is actually the key social arena in which inequality is reproduced.”
Ultimately, Ford’s cuts to OSAP are absolutely devastating. In giving power to Ford’s plans for post-secondary education, Ontario has demonstrated their willingness to make life much far harder for both young people looking to begin their careers and those looking to secure financial stability through career advancement in our horrific cost-of-living crisis.