All Posts Tagged With: "Student Loans"

Five things students are talking about today (February 27th)

An arts major? Probably. (Ethan M. Long/Flickr)

1. Research from the University of Guelph has shown that university arts majors and those in similar college programs are generally slower to pay off student loans than business, health and engineering students, even when starting salaries are controlled for. Sociologist David Walters, one of the researchers behind the study, said it’s unclear why, though his theories include “lack of numeracy” and less “life-planning skills” among arts types. I’d lean toward the life-planning skills—they did choose arts degrees, after all. And considering how critical of capitalism the arts tend to be, they’re probably more resentful about having to pay them back and more likely to want to stick it to the man by paying as slowly as possible. It makes sense. In Quebec it’s arts students who encouraged everyone to skip school and demand free tuition. (Disclaimer: I have an arts degree.)

2. A Ryersonian editorial gives two thumbs up to Tim Hudak’s plan to invest more in degrees that lead to jobs. The Ontario Progressive Conservative leader’s Path to Prosperity White Paper suggests financial aid be based on students’ choices of programs. “Decisions about who should receive loans,” it reads, “should involve assessments of future employability and reward good academic behaviour.” Naturally this led to a backlash from those in fields where degrees don’t (directly) lead to jobs, including from Professor Pettigrew. The Ryersonian says agriculture, fashion, family studies, theatre, philosophy, anthropology, archeology and political science should get less money while science, technology, engineering and math should get more.

Continue reading Arts grads vs. student loans, Tim Hudak & a porn accident

Prof. Pettigrew on the Ontario PC Party’s plan

Hudak (Office of the Leader of the Opposition)

The conservative Ontario PCs have released a new policy paper on higher education. Amid the usual boilerplate rhetoric that conservative politicians trot out on such occasions was this little gem regarding student loans:

Decisions about who should receive loans and how much money is to be awarded should involve assessments of future employability and reward good academic behaviour. Rewarding good behaviour means not only making the smart and efficient choice about where to go to school, but also keeping students accountable for how they choose to spend the money the government is lending them. To maintain aid, students must demonstrate a minimum level of academic success. Too often, our loans and grants programs reward mediocrity.

It takes a while for the magnitude of what is being proposed here to hit you. When it does, you realize that the PCs are proposing twisting the student loan system into a bureaucratic nightmare of nearly Orwellian proportions.

Continue reading Hudak would manipulate students through loans

No Money Down tuition proposals make sense

Cassandra Lopes reads in Hart House Library at the University of Toronto (Jessica Darmanin)

Sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was a doctoral student at the University of Waterloo, I ended up chatting with a couple of very energetic student advocates who stopped by my office. Waterloo was at that time going through some kind of vote regarding their student union and earnest activists were everywhere.

Then, as now, the topic of how to deal with rising tuition fees was in the air, and I noted that I had been intrigued by what was then commonly called “income-contingent” loan repayment. The basic idea was that you could borrow what you needed through the regular venues of student loans, but then when it came time to repay the loans, the rate at which you had to repay would depend on how much money you were making at the time.

Continue reading It’s time to rethink student loans

Lady Gaga, “swarmings” in Ottawa and riot justice

Gaga in Toronto (Gn!pGnop/Flickr)

1. Lady Gaga’s latest bit of performance art/marketing is called “Sleeping with Gaga.” Last night, she climbed into a structure at New York’s Guggenheim and encouraged celebrities like Paris Hilton and Marc Jacobs to touch her while she slept. Oh, and she also got a new tattoo that some say looks like Honey Boo Boo, the proud redneck beauty queen who stars in the eponymous TLC show. (Not making this up.)

2. Sweden isn’t the fairytale land we Canadians sometimes imagine it to be. A drunk man, 38, fell onto the tracks at a metro station south of Stockholm and instead of being helped up to safety, he was robbed of his wallet, gold chain and mobile phone. The thief calmly fled. The victim was then hit by the train and seriously injured.

3. Ottawa isn’t safe either, apparently. An 18-year-old male was charged after two “swarmings” near the University of Ottawa. Hanten Hersi and an unidentified accomplice are accused of stealing from three people in two separate incidents. At one point, they showed a gun to a woman before robbing her. The second suspect is described as a 5’7″ to 5’10″ tall black male with dreadlocks.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 14 edition)

It takes a lot of creativity to finance second degrees

Pennington (Andrew Tolson)

From the Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue.

Last fall, when Kristen Pennington started at the University of Toronto faculty of law, she was surprised to learn of “an assumption” that students wouldn’t work during the school year. “I’d never been in school and not worked,” the 22-year-old says. “It wasn’t a question.”

During her first year in law school, Pennington held down three part-time jobs: she worked as an after-hours receptionist at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, as an executive assistant for a lawyer, and as manager of the undergraduate residence at Glendon Campus, part of York University, where she also lived rent-free. “I worked for my room,” she says. “It was a great expense to cross off the list.” The commute from Glendon to U of T’s downtown campus, on public transit, was “45 minutes on a good day.”

Continue reading Professional at a steep price

Man pretends to be student loan official

Police in Durham, Ont. say someone is trying to scam current and future university and college students. Durham Regional Police have heard several complaints of a man calling and pretending he’s from the National Student Loan Centre. The suspect asks people to fax him copies of passports, Social Insurance Numbers and other personal details. He may be planning identity theft.

Goodbye parental contribution

Aside from promising no tuition, one of the most interesting ideas in the Alberta Liberals’ platform last week was that they would no longer consider parental income when students apply for loans.

In this week’s budget, the Progressive Conservative government beat them too it, with a plan that does away with parental contributions as of Aug. 1. Students will need to contribute a flat rate of just $1,500 to their educations before they’ll be considered eligible for student loans. They’ll no longer be rejected based on savings, part-time job earnings or high parental incomes.

Students have long argued that it’s unfair to deny them loans based on their parents’ incomes. After all, just because your parents earned a certain amount, it doesn’t mean they’ll share it with you.

Continue reading Alberta will make student loans easier

And Saskatchewan may give you $20,000

For students who want a guaranteed job after graduation, nothing comes closer than nursing in Saskatchewan. According to the Regina Leader-Post, the government has hired 900 nurses since 2008, but could need as many as 2,000 more in the next two years if those set to retire do so as planned. There were already 449 nursing jobs being advertised in the province last month.

The government has increased seats at post-secondary schools for registered nurses dramatically in the past four years: from 300 in 2006 to 690 now, but that likely won’t be enough.

That’s why, in last week’s Throne Speech, the government announced that seats in universities to train nurse practitioners—highly-paid advanced nurses who often have the ability prescribe drugs—will grow from 30 to 50 per year. The shortage is also the reason the government says it will forgive $20,000 of student loans for recent nursing graduates who work in rural and remote communities for at least five years. It’s easy to see why Saskatchewan is being so agreesive about training, wooing and keeping nurses: neighbouring Alberta is on a nurse hiring spree right now too.

Parents are expected to pay. But what if they can’t or won’t?

Photo by kenteegardin on Flickr

University of New Brunswick student Ben Whitney has a $5,000 hole in his budget this year thanks to the re-introduction of the parental contribution requirement for student loan funding in that province. He was loaned $8,000 last year, before the change. This year, the third-year student got just $3,000 because of what his parents—a middle manager and a secretary—took home last year from work. The 20-year-old’s parents are expected to make-up the difference. It’s money that Whitney says his parents don’t have this year.

But the issue of parental contributions, which he’s taken up with verve, means a lot more to him than sudden penury. “It’s also a matter of principle,” says Whitney. “As an adult, I shouldn’t have to depend on my parents until I’m 22,” he says. “It’s also a matter of pride to have to call my parents and ask, can you send me $20 so I can buy a bottle of shampoo?” he says. But he can’t afford such luxuries otherwise, even with a part-time job.

Continue reading How parental income can kill your student loans

Two-thirds think they’ll pay off debt in five years

Nearly half of Canadian students say they will have either have no debt or owe less than $10,000 upon graduation, according to a new study from BMO Financial Group. In fact, the average owed by all students is $18,800, according to Statistics Canada. On top of that, nearly two-thirds  (63 per cent) think they will be able to pay off their student debt within five years of graduation. The default repayment period for government loans is nine-and-a-half years. The study included 625 college and university students and was conducted by Leger Marketing.