Fifty-six Canadian schools are now accepting travel reward points for student loan credits, and more are set to participate.
The Higher Ed Points program allows students to use Aeroplan miles to pay off up to thousands of dollars’ worth of student loans.
“Students and families need as much help as they can get paying for higher education,” said Suzanne Tyson, founder of Higher Ed Points, which is separate from Aeroplan.
First launched in November 2013 with two participating institutions, the amount of schools participating in the program has grown to 56, according to Tyson.
York University, Western University, and Vancouver Island University are among the schools currently participating in the program, and about 250 students have used the program so far, she said.
Valerie Evans, manager of business operations at Carleton’s financial services, said the university is set to participate in the program.
“We are very close,” Evans said. “I understand it’s a very straightforward setup, so I am hopeful that it will be available early to mid-April.”
Tyson said 35,000 redeemed miles equals a $250 credit, and the average amount redeemed so far per person is about $1,000.
Alastair Woods, chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS)-Ontario, criticized the program as a distraction from the problem of rising education costs.
“It’s not about tuition fees rising far above the rate of inflation [and] it’s not about the fact that tuition fees have almost doubled in the last ten years in Ontario,” Woods said. “It doesn’t matter that the government has put less and less into higher education.”
Woods said lower and middle-income families wouldn’t benefit while providing wealthier families with “another discount to people who don’t need it.”
“At the end of the day, who is going to benefit from this program?” he said. “Not a lot of low-income families. Not very many middle-income families who definitely don’t have enough expendable cash to . . . accrue enough Aeroplan miles to pay off a significant portion of tuition fees.”
Tyson said students wouldn’t be the ones redeeming most Aeroplan miles, but the program allows parents, relatives, and random individuals to use Aeroplan miles to pay towards a student’s loan.
Individuals are able to contact Higher Ed Points and use their reward points to pay down loans of random and financially-needy students at a chosen post-secondary institution, she said.
Tyson said Higher Ed Points acts as a connector between loyalty programs and schools.
“It’s too difficult for loyalty to go one by one to institutions, and it’s too difficult for institutions to go to every loyalty program,” she said. “So having Higher Ed Points acted a hub between the two.”
William Mindenhall, a second-year mechanical engineering student at Carleton, said the program is a good idea and he would use it.
“Any way to help relieve the stress of students counts,” he said.
Mindenhall said Woods makes a point about Higher Ed Points benefitting wealthier students, but said some poorer students get more generous grants and are still able to use the program, while wealthier students don’t often qualify for OSAP.
Tyson said she hopes to get additional loyalty programs such as SCENE and Shoppers Optimum to add redeemable student loan credits, and more Canadian schools on board with her program.
