MyAwards Makes a Late Arrival
For several months now, Lakehead students have been unable to access MyAwards through MyInfo, a crucial database that connects students to potential scholarships. Although MyInfo states that the “new database will be up and running in October,” students felt anxiety when the website still was not up by October 15th, 2021. Typically, undergraduate students have between August 15th and October 15th to apply for scholarships before their deadlines. If this deadline is not met, there are no scholarships to be applied for. With the usual deadline passed, many students were left to conclude that there may be no opportunities for scholarships in the 2021-2022 academic term.
The Argus has since reached out to Student Central and confirmed some uplifting news. The new MyAwards database will be opening at the end of October, tentatively, and will close around mid-December. This means that the deadline has moved back and students will be able to apply for scholarships. Moreover, our Student Central representative has stated that, although the applications are due later in the fall term, students will still be receiving their scholarships, bursaries, and awards in the winter term, as per usual. This delay may also be beneficial since the new database is set to be more user-friendly. This means that more scholarships will be able to reach more people so that every student can get the greatest benefit available to them. In spite of all this good news, the anxiety surrounding what was believed to be a lack of financial aid opens up further discussion surrounding student financial capabilities.
The most recent school year recorded and published by Statistics Canada regarding student finances is 2016-2017. In that year, it was reported that 380,000 students received financial aid that they did not have to pay back; this amount totalled $1 billion. Without this aid, that is one BILLION dollars out of student pockets. In the same year, 497,000 students received $2.6 billion in loans, that is, money that they will have to pay back. So from one school year, there is almost triple the amount of debt than there are grants. These debts are not quick to go away. According to the government website, “once six months have elapsed [since graduation], borrowers begin to repay their loans through monthly payments, typically over a 114-month period (9.5 years).” That means that, on average, students will spend an entire decade after they graduate paying off loans. That is a decade of monthly payments in what is typically the most expensive and least paid portion of a person’s life. This debt is often acquired due to a fundamental flaw in OSAP.
According to the OSAP website, a person is still defined as a dependent after the age of eighteen if they are in full-time postsecondary schooling and have been out of high school for less than four years (and they still live with their parent(s)/guardian). What does this mean? It means that if Person A lives with their parents while in school, then their parents’ income will determine whether or not they can receive financial aid. Even if Person A’s parents are not giving them a single dime towards their tuition, the government assumes the parents are paying for it. Meanwhile, if Person B’s parents are paying for them to live outside of the home and are paying their entire tuition, Person B’s income is based on how much money they personally make. If Person B does not have a job, they will receive thousands of dollars in grants that they will not have to pay back. As a result, many people with situations similar to that of Person A must take out loans to cover their tuition because they are not receiving income from anywhere else and their parents make too much money for them to be considered for grants.
For students, the situation has gotten more dire than the statistics from 2016-2017 reveal. Since that year, Premier Ford has come into the office and made significant changes to financial aid for post-secondary students. Kayla Weiler, a national executive representative of the CFS–O, sent an email to The Varsity criticizing the Ford government by saying: “students are already facing some of the highest tuition rates in the country and the lowest per-capita student funding.” Here, Weiler is referring to the decrease in OSAP funding from $10.5 billion in 2019-2020 to $10.3 billion in 2020-2021, amidst a pandemic. According to Statistics Canada, COVID-19 resulted in 73% of students having to take on more debt to complete their education. This same source noted that, among students, 48% temporarily lost their job or were laid off, 26% had to work reduced hours, and 49% lost job prospects. As a result of all this, students overall have less financial aid and less opportunity to earn money through work.
With everything that has been going on with students losing multiple sources of income, perhaps there is a need for greater transparency, at the very least. The Lakehead website’s statement that a new database would arrive sometime in October was anxiety-inducing and unclear for many students wanting to apply before the deadline. Instead, an open statement clarifying the undergraduate scholarship deadlines would be pushed back could have saved students from unnecessarily stressing about the ways in which they could potentially afford their current and upcoming costs of living.
Aside from the needed increased transparency from Lakehead itself, there are also greater questions pertaining to the overall financial aid available to students across Canada. It should not be “average” for students to pay off their debts for ten years after graduating. Student aid should not be judged based on their parents’ income when they are not actually receiving financial help with their tuition. The government should not be cutting funding towards postsecondary education while student unemployment spikes amidst an international pandemic. Ultimately, students are financially struggling to make ends meet. They cannot afford groceries, transportation, rent, and more. As a society that considers itself to be civilized, we simply cannot continue to expect high school students to have successfully amassed enough wealth to put themselves through postsecondary education without giving them necessary financial assistance. And, if it’s not too much to ask, could we also start our lives without first overcoming a decade of debt?