Budget 2008: Millennium Foundation to be replaced
New Canada Student Grant Program addresses major criticism of Auditor-General: will mean same grants for students, but more transparency and accountability to Parliament.
A decade after it was created, the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation will be replaced by a new needs-based, non-repayable grant program to be called the Canada Student Grant Program.
The Conservative government says that, after a year-long review of student aid, it found the Foundation had limited success in encouraging more people to attend post-secondary education and did not provide students with predictable year-to-year funding. The new grant program will replace the Foundation which expires in 2009.
The Canada Student Grant Program will distributed according to income levels. Because the grants will be awarded each year of study, students will know how much to expect in support from year to year. The grants will range from approximately $250 per month for low income students to $100 per month for middle income students. 245,000 studens will benefit from the program each year.
Student groups were split on the issue. The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the second largest student lobby group in the country, was disappointed in the dissolution of the Foundation, but welcomed the dedication of its funding to a needs-based grant system.
“Today’s announcement marks the end of Canada’s tenure as one of the few western industrialised nations without a national system of grants,” said Amanda Aziz, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. “It was long overdue.”
“We are cautiously optimistic about the delivery mechanism for the announced grant program and will move forward bearing the responsibility of ensuring that the Canada Student Grant Program is delivered in an efficient and transparent manner,” said David Simmonds, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance.
The new program will distribute $350 million in student aid when it begins in the fall of 2009. This amount will match the funds currently provided to students by the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Funding will increase by $80 million in 2012/13, to $430 million. This additional funding, which the government is describing as new, is above and beyond the current $138 million a year delivered by current federally-administrated grant programs such as Canada Access Grants and Canada Study Grants. The patchwork of federal grant programs will be integrated into the new grants program.
The government says the new grants problem will address concerns about the operation of the Scholarship Foundation.
“The new Canada Student Loans Program is just a rebrand of a Liberal program,” said Liberal post-secondary critic Mike Savage. “The last time they rebranded a program was with the Canada Summer Jobs program. Their rebrand was a disaster and they restored the Liberal program. We hope history doesn’t repeat itself.”
In the budget speech, Flaherty was critical of the Foundation, saying it “had limited success in encouraging more people to go to college or university, and did not provide students with predictable funding from one year to the next.”
The Auditor General has criticized the Foundation model for lacking the same accountability provisions as government department due to their “third-party” status. The government says that the new program, administered by Human Resources and Social Development, will be more transparent.
When created, the Foundation was seen as by some provinces as an intrusion into the provincial jurisdiction of education. The administration of the Foundation required that agreements between the provinces and Foundation be negotiated. Disputes resulted which resulted in delays in getting aid to students. The new grant program will be administered using the current federal student-aid framework. Provinces that do not participate in the Canada Student Loans Program will receive equivalent funding to administer their own needs-based program.
In order to receive the new grants, students will be required to apply for student loan. If they received a loan, they will automatically be considered for the new grant. Low-income students will receive $2,000 for a eight-month school term and middle-income students will receive $800. The grant will be provided up-front to students.
The grants will be guaranteed for all years of an undergraduate or college program. The government hopes by providing the grants up-front and guaranteeing them for the length of a students program that more low-income students will enter into a post-secondary program.
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations were also concerned that the research functions of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation would fall through the cracks. “The Foundation was the only group that was doing research on access issues. Looking at Aboriginal students, low income students, and first generation students,” said Zack Churchill, national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. “We haven’t seen any indication from the government that the federal research will be picked up.”
The government says it will ensure that students receiving Foundation bursaries in 2008-09 will be unaffected by the wind-down of the Foundation.
PS. Kudos to the Canadian Federation of Students for this landmark lobbying victory. Winding down the MSF is long overdue. And to have won a national system of grants: AMAZING!
Joey, you seem to be mistaken. These are NOT needs-based grants, they are income-based grants (for better or worse). Needs based grants weigh costs and resources (like student loans). The Millennium grants were needs-based, these grants are not.
I wonder if the CFS even realizes that after a “long overdue” fight for a national system of needs based grants they have effectively eliminated all federal needs-based grants in Canada.
Hey John,
You are not incorrect nor am I. The needs assessment will be based upon income. The details were not in the budget of how this new system will work. We are investigating that right now, I can easily see how this assessment of need based upon income can go astray.
The stated goal here to get more assistance out the door to student who need it. If that’s what happens in reality, we will wait and see.
I am disappointed by the lack of coverage of the smaller, but equally significant role that the Millennium Scholarship Foundation played with regards to MERIT based scholarhips, known as Millennium Excellence Awards.
While these awards, ranging from a $4k one time, to $5k recurring($20k total), only represented 5% of the annual monies distributed by the Foundation, they represented one of the most widespread merit awards in the country. These prestigious scholarships were awarded based on four criteria: leadership, community service, innovation and academic excellence.
The Excellence awards rewarded all-round students who showed dedication to their communities, be it their schools, neighbourhoods, cultural groups or through involvement with aid organizations overseas.
It appears these top-notch students have fallen through the cracks of the Conservative budget.
My previous comment didn’t seem to make the cut, here. I’ll try again. CASA is wrong: MSF is not the only organization doing research. (And thank goodness for that! Eliminating that government boutique public relations scheme is good news for Canadians.) CASA should check out scholarly sources at local university library.
“Needs-based” is actually a specific policy term that refers to a calculation of student “need” – ie how much money a student needs, given the government’s calculations, to pay for education. The common criticism of needs-based grants are that they tend to go to students from wealthier backgrounds – because although they might have high resources, they have even higher costs because they tend to choose higher-tuition programs. Almost any student going to law school, for example, is high-need, even though they might come from a wealthy family. This was a common criticism of Millennium grants (although this is one critique that did not come from the CFS)
Strictly income-based grants, like this new one, ignore need calculations in exchange for simplicity. This new grant will not be needs-based. A low-income student going to a college with low tuition will get the same as a low-income student going to med school (although their loan will still be needs-based).
I happen to think income-based grants are better than needs-based, although I think a mix of the two would seem best, and it surprises me to see the government go all-or-nothing. The CFS, on the other hand, has tended to strongly favour needs-based aid, as it is more universal.
Rick, I couldn’t disagree with you more. The Millennium Foundation will be sorely missed by students across the country, but in Alberta in particular where I am most familiar. As a member of the University of Alberta Students’ Union, which is neither a member of CFS or CASA, I’m greatly concerned about a new unproven program that will likely not conduct the valuable research into financial aid that the MSF produced nor will it be as efficient.
I’m also not buying the GoC’s arguement that this program will be less infringing on provincial jurisdictions. MSF was negotiated WITH the provinces to meet specific needs (in Alberta that was rural students), but this program appears to be laid out on an income-based framework without any significant student consultation. This could be very problematic in Alberta, which will now have to come up with a new program to help rural learners offset the additional costs of obtaining an education away from home in an urban centre
So, just to get this straight.. the government is moving 350 million from the Millennium Scholarship, which, while not ideal managed to get about 97% of its funds into students hands, to a new program tied to Student Loans in hopes that this helps more students, yet at the same time is spending nearly 123 million in trying to revamp that same Student Loans program so that it.. well.. works? Does anybody but me see the irony/problem here?
And while they’re at it, they’re decreasing the maximum amount any student can get and forcing students to take out student loans to get it.
And the CFS and students are happy about this?
[...] failed “national” initiatives, like the Millennium Scholarship Foundation, demonstrate how billions of dollars are wasted on Ottawa’s good intentions. Of course, [...]
Hm…What I’d like to see more of is programs like the “work colleges” in the States. They offer a combination of academic scholarships and a work term, which means the student puts in 15 hours a week on-campus. With state and federal grant programs, the student not only gets some excellent work experience and graduates debt-free, but also never pays a penny of tuition: http://www.workcolleges.org
Maybe they’ve got more freedom than public colleges, but the whole system could use this kind of ingenuity…Education is a right, not a privilege. Anyone wanna start a lobby group with me?
I got one of the awards…
but yes I’m low-income and guaranteed funding would be so much better.
I know a girl who lied on her application and they didn’t find out, giving her 25000, and she was incredibly wealthy.
I’m still happy to be a recipient