Photo credit: Toronto Star
A provincewide pause on student financial assistance payments to Ontario career colleges will last for months, the government has confirmed, leaving some students worried it will prevent them from graduating.
The Canadian Press reports that Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn announced Tuesday afternoon that the pause won’t be lifted until the government establishes a new process for approving private post-secondary institutions under the Ontario Student Assistance Program.
That work isn’t expected to be finished until the new year, he said, and the government is also still working to secure third-party loans for students through banks.
Quinn enacted the pause after he said preliminary findings from an audit into OSAP usage at career colleges highlighted serious concerns.
Ministry investigators launched in-person inspections last week at eight career colleges, he said. That is apart from the six institutions the government cut off from OSAP eligibility earlier this year.
Career Colleges Ontario also said that as part of its own review processes, it has removed seven schools and ownership groups representing 21 campuses from membership in its association.
Many students say they feel unfairly penalized by the allegedly suspicious activity of others. They and the industry association are calling for more of a targeted approach to weed out any bad actors.
“We are disappointed that yesterday’s announcement means students and compliant institutions will continue to face uncertainty until at least the new year,” Career Colleges Ontario wrote in a statement Wednesday.
The promise of a resolution months away is cold comfort for students like Jennifer Koster, who is in the law clerk program at Trillium College and was expecting to finish school in February.
“The only way that I could describe it was a bomb being dropped on me,” she said of the news earlier this month that OSAP payments were paused for all career college students.
Further complicating matters for Trillium College students is a move last week by the school to suspend classes at its various campuses due to the uncertainty around OSAP. Several students say the college wanted to put them on payment plans with monthly instalments of around $1,500, but they couldn’t afford that without OSAP.
Koster is on the Ontario Disability Support Program, and she would have to put almost her whole monthly disability payment toward tuition at that payment level, she said.
Scott Daley, a massage therapy student at the CTS Canadian Career College campus in Barrie, said the OSAP pause and its extension into the new year is a major stressor.
