A new report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has examined what amounts of financial aid students are eligible for based on their income group and concludes that Canada’s student financial aid systems are too complicated and full of inequality.
“It takes very little investigation to realize that student financial aid systems are complex to the point of incredulity,” the report said, published in August by Carleton student Jordan MacLaren.
MacLaren worked on the report for four months in order to fulfill the requirements of her placement with the CCPA as part of her master’s degree in social work. She was inspired to research the issue after her own experience with applying for financial aid.
“I grew up in Quebec and when I applied to my provincial government for aid for my undergraduate degree, I wasn’t eligible for any assistance, because my parents were expected to contribute the majority of the funds I needed for school.”
However when she ran her information through an aid calculator for Ontario, a province just 20 minutes away, she discovered she was eligible to receive thousands of dollars under their assistance programs.
“If there could be such a great difference between two provinces, I wondered whether my experience was a chance occurrence or if this degree of variability existed across all the provinces.”
The report based its profile on a student who fit the racial majority and came from a household with two employed parents.
Therefore the student would not be eligible for programs aiming to “reduce the barriers experienced by northern or Aboriginal students, student with disabilities, students with dependents or students who have lived in foster care.”
The number of outcomes possible for an undergraduate application is equal to the complexity score of eligibility for student aid in each province. Ontario holds the highest score, with 94 possible outcomes. Alberta, which holds the second highest, has 59 possible outcomes.
Jen Carter, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), said she understands firsthand the struggles that come with financing post-secondary education through government aid. When her father lost his job before she began her post-secondary education at the University of Western Ontario, she said she was “thrown through almost every hoop in the system.”
“The means by which we can empower students with the resources necessary to ask questions about the system just isn’t there,” Carter said.
“The biggest issue as it stands is knowledge about the system. There are many programs run in Ontario that would be best effective if they were more streamlined and centralized.”
MacLaren said this isn’t an “issue of financial literacy.”
“Provinces are able to administer student financial aid in whatever way they see fit, but the amount of complexity and variability promotes inequality,” she said. “My hope is that this report will spark a greater discussion about whether provincial and national programs represent the public’s interests.”
MacLaren said there are many important areas remaining to be researched by this report, including private loans and student financial aid made available for those who do not fit the report’s narrow profile.
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