OUSA

Canadian Student Survey

TORONTO/CNW/March 8 – Due to record unemployment, Ontario students are deeply concerned about finding the resources necessary to pay for their education, says a report released today. The “Canadian Student Survey: Summer Work and Paying for Post-Secondary Education” examines the strain of high youth unemployment rates, how students fund their education and how cash limitations affect their ability to pursue an education.

“Record levels of student unemployment have taken a heavy toll on Ontario students’ bottom line and they are turning to the government for help,” said Dan Moulton, President of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance. “Over 225,000 students rely on the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP), but it’s just not meeting their needs.”

OSAP requires each student to contribute a minimum $2,710 of summer income toward his or her education. This is based on a student working 30 hours a week over a 16-week summer and is imposed on every student, regardless of whether he or she was actually employed.

Survey participants reported saving an average of only $1,500 from their summer jobs, more than a thousand dollars less than OSAP assumes. Moreover, 30% of the students who reported working last summer worked less than 20 hours a week, and these underemployed students were more likely to be from Ontario.

“During a particularly difficult summer, thousands of students were unable to earn OSAP’s arbitrary minimum contribution and did not receive enough government aid to fully cover their costs,” added Moulton. “It’s crucial that the provincial and federal governments revisit the summer contribution to ensure OSAP is there when students need it.”

The “Canadian Student Survey: Summer Work and Paying for Post-Secondary Education” was a bilingual, multi-institutional survey conducted on university campuses across the country in the fall term of the 2009-10 academic year. It was commissioned by a partnership of student alliances across the country, including the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS) and Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA).

The report is the first of three to be released this year, and can be found HERE.

On Monday, OUSA is launching its first Food for Thought Campaign, aimed at raising awareness of the deficiencies of the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Specifically, the campaign is targeting the OSAP needs assessment, which is a formula that is used to calculate how much a student needs to live on during a school year. It calculates its numbers based on what it believes to be the necessities, and for food, the program assesses that students only need $7.50 a day, or $2.50 a meal. Since we believe that $7.50 is an inadequate amount to properly sustain an individual in a healthy and meaningful way, we thought we would start an experiment and see if it was possible. We found 5 students at 4 of our institutions to attempt the experiment over the next three weeks. They will begin on Monday and end on Friday, March 26th. They will be blogging on the OUSA website daily, and be posting video blogs every few days.

They have created intro videos about themselves, and I have posted them below. Visit www.ousa.ca/foodforthought/ for more information about the campaign and the participants.

Rachel's Intro Video

Sarah's Intro Video

TORONTO, Feb. 5 /OUSA/This week, representatives of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) were invited to participate in the provincial government’s pre-budget consultations. In speaking before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, Justin Williams, OUSA Vice-President and Vice-President of the Federation of Students at the University of Waterloo, outlined three key priorities for Ontario students: modernizing financial assistance, supporting student success, and restoring a fair and adequate funding model for our universities. OUSA’s accompanying budget submission, entitled Higher Education: The Engine of Economic Recovery, presents pragmatic solutions in each of these key areas while recognizing the government’s tenuous fiscal situation.

“Funding is the most important issue facing the post-secondary education sector today. The government needs to know what students’ priorities are and how to fund them, and OUSA has done that,” said Dan Moulton, OUSA President.

In addition to the formal pre-budget process and ongoing consultations with the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, OUSA has recently taken these recommendations to policy staff in the Office of the Premier and the Office of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.

“OUSA has received great feedback from our partners in the sector and from the government about our very practical and essential our suggestions are. We hope the government sees this reality and enacts our recommendations in its budget,” said Moulton.

HIGHER EDUCATION: THE ENGINE OF ECONOMIC RECOVERY – OUSA’S SUBMISSION TO THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ECONOMIC AFFAIRS (Click Image to View)
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