Ontario’s Free Tuition Promise Doesn’t Really Work For All Students With Broke Parents

My family has always had money, they just had a problem with spending it. Growing up, my parents income fluctuated between $80,000-$100,000. I generally grew up with little financial worry. That's not to say we lived extravagantly, but we lived well, so much that young me thought my parents had a grip on their lives. That was until I hit my latter teenage years and realized how shitty my parents' finances really were.

By the time it came for me to go to university, things were bad. My mom was going to declare bankruptcy and my dad was apparently dodging a dozen collection agency calls a day. They were both swimming in debt. We had lost our house, we had sold all of our appliances and we were storing our food outside in a plastic cooler. Despite this, the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) still saw my parents income as pretty high and assumed that they were going to pay my way through university. My student loan funding was slashed—and it pretty much fucked me over in my first year of university.

Currently, the only route for somebody to receive OSAP funding is to qualify based on the combined income and assets of both the student and their parents, which must total under $200,000 for the student to receive the most basic of funding. This funding increases as a student's family gets further down the income chain, with a maximum of $15,000 available for those who fit into the lowest income bracket.

Yesterday's announcement that the Ontario government would be providing "free tuition" to all students whose families make under $50,000 a year was a relief to many. The program, which will be increasing the non-repayable grant portion of the program to completely cover tuition costs, undeniably helps low-income families.

As great as this announcement is, there's a few things to quibble with. First off, the grant doesn't take into account rising tuition and living expenses—two variables that, should the continue to increase, will eventually outweigh the benefits of the program and put us back to square one. More relevant to me, however, is that it overlooks students whose parents either can't pay for their kids' education, or simply don't want to.

In 2005, Brie Wilson (whose name has been altered) was a student the University of Waterloo. She worked two jobs, and commuted three hours each day to get to and from class. At the time, Wilson was denied OSAP because her father was making over $200,000 a year. However, like mine, Wilson's parents were drowning in debt, in the process of a grueling divorce, and they had no money to give her.

After finishing her first semester, Wilson dropped out of her program. The stress from balancing a heavy workload and a full class schedule was too much. She wouldn't return to university until she was 25, three years past the age to be considered "mature student" and be exempt from her parent's finances. Now 27 and a student at Ryerson University, Wilson says she's upset about all the years she missed out on.

"The system is designed with the idea that all parents have their child's best interest in mind, and even if they don't, that they are still driven by some sense of obligation, which not all feel," she told me. "What about the people who have bad or selfish parents? Do we deny them their right to education?"

And Wilson's not alone. Sydney McInnis is a second-year Ryerson student whose parents are separated. Both make slightly above $50,000 per year, but can only contribute a little bit of money every semester toward her education. Because of this, McInnis receives only $7,000 from OSAP, and pays for the rest of her expenses via a high-interest bank loan and a part-time job. McInnis describes it as "extremely stressful."

"My mom and I were on the phone yesterday and we were talking about all the debt I'm going to have, and she sarcastically said, Well, when I die, what I leave behind can help you pay it off! Like, it sounds like a joke, but it's also kind of true. It's hard to stomach I'm only 19 and owe money to all these people."

Outside of direct income, two things are taken into account when assigning OSAP funding: distance from a dependent's home, and what assets their family has. For the former, the closer a student's university is to their home, the less funding they will receive for living expenses, with those that live within 30 kilometers of their school not being considered for additional living expenses at all.

In terms of assets, RESPs, vehicles, bursaries, and personal savings are generally expected to be liquidated to help pay for a student's education. This means that if you're used to driving but are within reasonable means of commuting, you'll be ditching the car for the train and emptying your savings account to pay for your schooling.

In the 2013-2014 academic year, 380,000 students received OSAP, with the average family income in Ontario being $76,510. The statistics also show that, when it came to maximum funding, 73 percent of students who were married or living with a dependent (raising a child as a sole-support parent) received that number, while only 14 percent of students who were single received the same funding.

There is one exit strategy for students caught in this catch-22: the "Family Breakdown" program allows students to apply for emancipation from their parent's finances under very specific circumstances. In its own words, a student "must demonstrate that a serious and permanent breakdown of the family relationship has occurred" in order to qualify for the program.

"Examples of a family breakdown include, but are not limited to, physical or mental abuse, parental drug or alcohol addiction or serious family rifts," the document reads. "This review is for serious family situations only; we can not process a review when a parent simply does not want to support the student or does not agree with the student's choice of program, or choice of living arrangements."

Rajean Hoilett, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students Ontario (CFSO), says that yesterday's announcement is a sign that the government is beginning to hear the concerns that students have been voicing about access to education for the last decade, but notes that more needs to be done to ensure that all students have access to affordable education.

"A lot of students that find themselves in this situation are also dealing with very high-stress situations, and while the process isn't impossible to go through, it is a bit of onerous ordeal," Hoilett said, noting that the procedure to become financially independent before the mature student age of 22 is more difficult than it needs to be.

Ultimately, Hoilett explains that the real solution is not just fixing complicated funding programs, but rather the complete elimination of tuition fees. That way, students can not only get an education, but do so without having to worry about what kind of background they come from.

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