Conservatives maintain campus organizations will survive if they innovate
On Jan. 17, 2019, the provincial government announced that they are cutting tuition by 10 per cent and freezing those tuition rates for the next two years. The changes to tuition were made alongside three major changes that will impact students and staff at the University of Guelph:
- The cancellation of the free tuition program, which gave students with parents of a combined salary of $50,000 grants that covered tuition. Students who have been out of high school for four years were also eligible for the program. The free tuition program has been reverted to the grant-and-loan system, which will give lower-income students partial grants while making OSAP loans available.
- The six-month grace period for loans was scrapped, leaving students to accumulate interest on their student loan debt as soon as they graduate rather than giving them time to find a job or time to pay the capital down.
- The introduction of the Student Choice Initiative (SCI), which will delineate between “essential” and “non-essential” services. Essential services will have secured funding through certain student fees that are mandatory whereas non-essential services will give students the option to opt-out of those fees. This includes fees that were decided through the democratic process of asking and passing referendum questions to undergraduate students.
What we know about the Student Choice Initiative
In leaked documents from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) first reported by The Varsity, the University of Toronto student newspaper, “essential” fees will include:
- Athletics and recreation
- Health and wellness
- Safe walk programs
- Mental health services
- Student buildings
- Career services
- Student ID cards
Health and dental plans will remain in their pre-SCI form, allowing students to have an opt-out option through their student union.
All other ancillary fees will be considered “non-essential” and will have an opt-out option. According to the leaked documents, the opt-out selection process will be online and will be provided up front during the initial tuition billing.
Fees are also to be “itemized individually” to give what the MTCU calls full transparency, enforcing a measure that will prevent institutions from bundling student fees. For example, bundling a campus radio station and newspaper together under a media fee.
In a video post by the Carleton chapter of the Ontario Public Research Interest Group (OPRIG), Outreach and Programming Coordinator Brad Evoy made calls to the MTCU to ask if OSAP will cover ancillary fees.
In two phone calls, two different representatives, including Maria Mellas who is the director (acting) at the Student Financial Assistance Branch, confirmed that OSAP will not cover the ancillary fees leaving students to pay out-of-pocket for any services from “non-essential” organizations.
Evoy told The Ontarion that MTCU has been silent in his follow-ups with Minister Merilee Fullerton regarding further clarification on the policy.
The Ontarion has not heard back after multiple requests for an interview or a statement from Minister Fullerton and parliamentary assistant David Piccini.
Questions concerning the Student Choice Initiative
Some of the biggest questions surrounding the SCI include:
- How much autonomy an institution will have over categorizing “essential” and “non-essential” services and fees
- If there will be an accountability measure and what that will look like
- If first-year undergraduate students will be allowed to opt-out of fees when they are not yet familiar with the different organizations and services that are provided
Many critics say that MTCU and the Ford government continue to leave students and institutions in the dark about the finalized document.
“No one seems to have gotten the final documentation, they’ve been given some directives to follow up with timelines,” Evoy said. “One of the key aspects the Ford government has operated in a whole bunch of areas has been acting incredibly vague, and this started from their campaign onward to now.”
“So I think this is just a highlight on how [the Ford government] operate[s], which is by making broad demands and providing no actual solutions,” he continued.
The Ontarion asked Carrie Chassels, Vice-Provost Student Affairs at U of G, for comment regarding any directives the government has given the University on multiple occasions. Chassels said that she could not comment until the final document is received.
It is not clear when the Ford government will release the final document to university administration and when that information will be shared with the media, students, or staff.
The Ontarion asked the Guelph Campus Conservatives for an interview or statement regarding their thoughts on the OSAP changes and the SCI. They said their statement reflects the statement released by the Ontario PC Campus Association.
Accountability measure in place
There have been rumours of an accountability measure around the SCI; in the leaked documents, there was a section on “compliance” that will add monitoring or enforcement mechanisms to the ancillary fee policy.
The documents state that if the MTCU becomes aware of prohibited fees being charged to students, or if “non-essential” fees are being charged as “essential,” then institutions will be expected to reimburse students for those fees. The MTCU may also reduce operating grants by “a commensurate amount.”
It is still unclear what the accountability measure will look like and if there will be some sort of phone line, or if the MTCU will deal with whistleblowers directly.
In a statement to The Ontarion, Ciara Byrne (issues coordinator at MTCU) said that the MTCU is not introducing any new reporting or compliance measures.
Byrne confirmed that if an institution is found to charge a fee that has been prohibited under the government’s SCI framework then the MTCU will require the institution to refund the amount, or if the fee cannot be refunded, the institution’s operating grant can be reduced by an amount corresponding to the revenue raised by the prohibited fee.
Additionally, the MTCU may also implement ongoing monitoring of an institution if they believe a situation is deemed to warrant additional measures.
In an interview with The Ontarion, Kieran Moloney, president of the Carleton Campus Conservatives, said he supports an accountability measure, but that he has heard nothing from the provincial government.
Moloney drafted something similar to the SCI that he presented at the conservative policy convention that called for all non-academic fees to be opt-out. However, that policy never reached the floor.
He drafted the policy after leading a failed referendum campaign to have Carleton break ties from the Central Federation of Students (CFS).
The accountability measure is important for Moloney to keep student organizations within the opt-out framework the Ford government mandated.
“There is a concern for me that student groups who don’t want to have their funding cut might just change their mandate in order to keep their funding, and be deemed essential,” Moloney told The Ontarion. “What’s stopping a student union saying ‘okay we provide CPR Training or First Aid training therefore we’re a health provider and we’re essential.’ There has to be a clear distinction there.”
First-year opt-outs and the free-riding problem
Another concern is wondering if first-years will have the ability to opt-out of funding for organizations they are not familiar with. Critics worry that many new students may seek to opt-out of funding to save on their first year of school, or parents of first-years who are paying for their schooling will choose to opt out.
Byrne said that first years will have the option to opt-out of non-essential fees at the time of billing.
“One of our big concerns, in particular, first years as a cohort not understanding the services provided and institutions paid by ancillary fees,” Danny Chang, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, told The Ontarion. “If you’re given a checklist to reduce the cost of what your fees look like, I think it’s very easy for an individual who might not understand the thing they are opting out of to simply opt out.”
Chang also said there is concern that students who opt-out will be unable to access student services in the event that student groups limit access depending on the funding they receive.
The issue lies in the free rider problem where students will still have access to, and be able to benefit from, services even if they have opted out of paying for those services.
Similarly, there is also the issue that some services funded by undergraduate students are used by graduate students at U of G as well as community members, for whom there is no opt-in option in place to help fund the services they use or want to support.
Conservatives confident campus institutions will survive; critics worried jobs will be lost, institutions weakened
The main issue for both Moloney and Piccini is student organizations that engage in political movements they say have no pertinence to campus life.
Piccini said students asked why their “dues [are] going to pet peeve projects” of Special Interest Groups. Piccini also said the Ford government heard at length about groups, like Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS), that would “fill up buses to head into various protests that had nothing to do with the student experience.”
Now both conservatives believe that student organizations will have to innovate their structure, find different sources of revenue, and change their mandate to serve a wider campus demographic.
In conversations between The Ontarion, Moloney, and Piccini, both stated that they felt confident that campus institutions, like campus radio and student newspapers, will survive the SCI through these types of innovation.
“Fundamentally it’s going to force these groups to innovate in how they’re delivering these services and their content,” Moloney said.
Why innovation may not be enough
Campus organizations are already bracing for cuts to funding, a survey conducted by OneClass reported that 57 per cent of students will opt out of their student papers. CFRU said their staff may have to cut staff. The Ontarion, for example, is planning to make structural changes including moving a number of part-time positions, which anyone can apply to, to work study positions, which only certain undergraduate students can apply to.
Despite the confidence of people like Moloney and Piccini, those who are on the ground floor of organizations facing the SCI understand that innovation takes time to implement and even longer when resources are already limited, as they are for many campus organizations.
Adaptability cannot take place overnight when there are operating budgets in place, contracts for current workers to pay out, and a lack of a clear timeline on when changes will be made as well as very little information on who will be impacted and to what extent. Even once organizations adapt, it is unclear how they can plan to operate through a year when it is unclear from one term to the next how many students will opt to pay the student levies organizations rely on to survive.
Graphs by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion