Advocating for Lower Tuition Fees

Syvil Williams

Feliza Fanto

Sophia Phillips

Viola Nogra

Rizell Salalila

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=WaySvKCawMM

Why are we advocating for lower tuition fees?

We chose the topic of post-secondary costs for our advocacy project because it is something that each of us can relate to. We are all Centennial College students and have all experienced paying for tuition and other necessities such as textbooks. We've also faced the challenges that come with paying fees and at times, it can be a difficult task. Also, we have a group member who is an international student and some group members have paid tuition, or know people who are, using financial assistance services like OSAP or have worked while going to school, so we can input different perspectives on this issue.

Going to college or university is the next step for a higher education and a pathway to careers. There are many who are able to move on to post-secondary education, but some face the challenge of tuition and other costs, such as textbooks and residency, as it does cost quite a bit of money. Those who want to move on to post-secondary tuition should not have to any barriers, like expensive tuition.

Rising Tuition in Canada• From 1993 – 2015, tuition fees in most of the

provinces in Canada have tripled.

• It is expected that from the 2014-2015 school year to the 2017-2018 school year, the cost of post-secondary tuition will increase even more, Ontario by 13%.

(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, September 2014)

Working to Pay Off Tuition and Other School Fees

• Compared to 40 years ago, the number of minimum wage hours students had to work to be able to afford the cost of tuition have doubled and tripled. Some now even have to work six times the hours.

• In 1975, the national average of hours someone has to work to pay tuition is 230. In 2013, the national average increased to 570 hours.

• Ontario requires 708 hours of work to afford tuition, the most out of all the provinces.

(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)

Some facts about OSAPWhat is OSAP? 

• OSAP is a financial assistance program for students who are attending or are going to attend college or university.

• OSAP offers two kinds of money; grants, which is money that does not have to be paid back, and student loans that will have to be paid back. This money is provided by the Ontario government and the federal government. You can get OSAP even if you’re attending or will attend a school in another country, as long as the school is approved by OSAP.

Who is eligible?• Canadian citizen• Permanent resident• Protected person

International Students are not eligible for OSAP.

The government also considers:• Status of the person applying for OSAP• The school they will attend• Program of study• Course load• Duration of study• Education costs• Their financial contribution as well as

their family’s

http://www.jsrdf.orghttp://www.jsrdf.org

We interviewed an OSAP student to gain insight on their experiences with paying tuition using OSAP money and the process and difficulties they may have had to get it. We asked different questions like, “What does OSAP cover in school fees?” “Is there a time frame to pay back OSAP?” and “Was it hard to get OSAP?” What we learned from this interview was that OSAP mainly covers their tuition fees and any leftover money will go to textbooks and other school fees. But when they started working and getting more hours at work, OSAP put that into consideration and they got less money, and are only able to get enough for tuition. We also learned that there is no time frame to pay back OSAP, but there are people who are still paying back OSAP even when they’ve finished school and already have careers.

OSAP Student Interview Summary

Working Student Interview SummaryFrom interviewing a working student we learned that more than half of people’s wages go into paying for post secondary tuition fees. This leaves very little money for the student to spend on any other necessities in life. They do not have enough money for food, clothes, and paying off all the bills. We also learned that working part time and doing your studies can affect your mental health greatly. It adds on a lot of stress because you might not find time to do the course work since your working so many hours. It can also affect your appetite and therefore your health. Because of high tuition fees people have to work part time which makes it very difficult to take a full course load. Therefore it would take most students at least a year longer to complete their studies because of this problem.

International Student Interview SummaryThis interview was done with an International student because we wanted to show the expense of Post Secondary education. During thus interview questions are asked like what amount you pay as an International student. The answer was “we pay $14,000 for one year”. Another question that was asked was what benefits you get as an international student, to summarize this answer they only get insurance benefits only if there is an accident that causes injury. They are not supposed to participate in scholarship because they are supposed to have their tuition fee coming in the country. They are only allowed to work certain hours during the school term. Books are not covered.

Survey

Our group created a survey on survey monkey to gather information on how aware and how affected students by the high cost of school fees. We come to a conclusion that most of the students are not aware if the tuition fee went up or down. Also, because of the high cost of the tuition some students are struggling to continue their study in college and university. From this research we decided to do a petition and social media particularly Facebook to bring awareness to our community as well the Ministry of Colleges and University.

OUR ACTION PLANS

SENDING A LETTER

We sent a letter to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities to bring awareness of our issue as the ministry is responsible for developing policy directions for colleges and universities, distributing funds assigned by the provincial legislature to post-secondary schools and providing financial-assistance programs for post-secondary students. In the letter, we included our experiences with paying tuition fees that is costly and what we learned from the research that we conducted on this matter. We talked about wanting change for everyone to be able to go into post-secondary education without facing the barriers of expensive tuition costs. We also included facts like how much international students and domestic students in our program have to pay every year just for tuition to show just how much we have to pay.

DONATION TO THE CENTENNIAL COLLEGE PROGRESS CHILD CARE LAB

As a group we decided to donate to the daycare in the progress lab school because most of the parents that have children attending day care are studying in Centennial College. We noticed that pampers are very expensive for some of the parents and decided as a group to donate some pampers.

In addition, the Quality Assurance Criteria requires that the centre has spear diapers at hand at all times in order to meet the standard at the Progress child care which relies on donation.

FUNDRAISING

Our group researched different stakeholders. Like the Centennial Alumni and the College Student Alliance. For one of our action plans we decided to fundraise money online to donate to one of our stakeholders which was the College Student Alliance. The fundraising website is called Fundly and our campaign title is “Accessible and Affordable Post Secondary Education.” We have also posted this fundraising website on our Facebook page so everyone had a chance to participate and donate. As a group we wanted to make difference in a person’s life so we were hoping to donate the money to help out for a scholarship.

We raised $100 dollars and will be donating it to the College Student Alliance. We have learned that just donating some money to the College Student Alliance definitely helped a student with their tuition fees. We have also learned that many people feels strongly about this issue.

FACEBOOK PAGE

Our group used Facebook for our social media campaign. We created a Facebook page and invited friends, families and relatives to join and comment about our advocacy on lowering cost of school fees for post secondary education. We aim to spread more awareness of the problem every students encounter every school year. We posted videos and quotes that relates to what we are advocating for. What we learned on this action plan strategy of using social media, specifically Facebook is seems people are not aware and do not care about the issue. Probably because it has been an issue for a while and nothing really change in the system of education. 

PETITION

Rationale for Petition • As college students we understand how difficult it is

paying the high tuition fees for post secondary education.

• For our strategy we reached out to the other struggling students and encouraged them to sign a petition on lowering the post secondary tuition fees.

• Our goal was to approach students that are working, not working, on OSAP and international students, to show that the high tuition fees effects all students and it is a problem that needs to be fixed.

• We also sent this petition along with a letter addressing this issue to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, in hopes to making a change.

How it went• Almost every student we approached to sign the

petition was very understanding and agreed that the tuition fees needs to be lowered

• We had all OSAP, working, not working, and international students sign the petition. The majority of students who signed were international students and they had a lot to say about this topic.

• Many of the comments that we received were that “It is not fair that international students have to pay at least triple the amount that domestic students are required to pay.”

• The students were very interested and happy that we were taking a stand and advocating for lower post secondary education fees. Almost all the students we approached was ready and willing to be a part of our journey to changing our future education for the better.

THE END!