With the release of the new federal budget, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government finally carved out an education agenda that has been sadly missing from its past budgets. The federal budget included money to replace the Millennium Scholarship Foundation (MSF), provide scholarships to doctoral students, increased funding for academic research and allocated funds to “modernize and streamline” the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP).
The MSF, a Liberal brainchild, was created in 1998 with an endowment of $2.5 billion. The MSF was set to expire in 2009 and the Conservatives have introduced the Canada Student Grant Program to fill the void of the MSF. At $350 million dollars the new grant based program will dole out grants to students based on the level of income, not need: $250 per month for low-income students and $100 per month for middle-income students.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the Conservative government expects around 240,000 students to take advantage of the new program. However, Canada’s Education Policy Institute argues that the Conservatives made a fatal error when calculate the number of participants the program will have to support. They argue that independent students will also be eligible to receive grants and since the vast majority of independent students would be classified as low-income, they will be eligible for the $250 per month grant. Because of their eligibility, the Education Policy Institute’s Canadian office places the number of eligible students at 500,000, more than twice the amount projected by the government.
This crucial error means that the program could end up costing approximately $1 billion; far more than the $350 million set aside. While, on the surface, the program sounds like a step in the right direction, the grossly underestimated number of participants could threaten the programs existence in future years or threaten other government programs if it breaks the $350 million mark.
Zach Churchill, National Chairman of CASA, added that, ““The Foundation was the only group that was doing research on access issues. Looking at Aboriginal students, low income students, and first generation students. We haven’t seen any indication from the government that the federal research will be picked up.”
Alex Usher, of the Education Policy Institute, agreed with Mr. Churchill and said that, “There will nobody speaking for access anymore in terms of research.”
The MSF and the Canada Student Grants Program worked to provide better access to post-secondary education for Canadian students. The Canada Student Grants Program also makes the same amount of money available to more students, mirroring the overall Conservative budget approach that was described by Liberal Leader Stephane Dion as a mile wide and an inch thick.
This means that there will have to be other effective mechanisms in place to help students gain access to quality post-secondary education. Where do hundreds of thousands of students turn? The Canada Student Loan Program (CSLP). The CSLP is also marked to receive $123 million to “modernize and streamline” the program.
According to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the money will go towards making online access and management easier, to help make loans available to part time students and helping students who have trouble repaying their loans.
Streamlining is great, but the government failed to address the largest problem faced by students because of the CSLP, high interest rates. Student loan borrows will continue to prop up the problem plagued program with the money the federal government collects in interest rates. Instead of fixing the core problem of the program, the Conservative government merely applied a $123 million Band-Aid.
The programs and spending initiatives are plentiful and between two of the initiatives they totaled more than $450 million. However, the amount does not guarantee that they were the most effective fixes for the problems that face students. For example, no longer will needs based research be conducted and the core problems of the CSLP have yet to be corrected. Until these topics are given the attention they deserve, the real issues surrounding access to education will not be understood and student borrowers will continue to prop up a loan program regardless of whether they can afford to do so.
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