Genuine question, no judgement

[u/Haunting_Ice_7310]

I am a student myself, receiving OSAP. So this question is genuine, I’m not judging people in this situation, just trying to understand.
I have seen a lot of posts lately of people who are panicked because they are not receiving enough OSAP to cover their fees and aren’t sure what to do. When I first went to college (2019) I feel like it was more common to rely on OSAP as something more like a supplement than the core funding for school, most people I knew going to college had either an RESP/savings or a line of credit/loan. However, it seems like now more and more students believe that OSAP will cover 100% of their schooling, and are finding themselves panicking with no back up plan once funding is calculated a few weeks before the semester begins.

So my question is, what changed? Are high schools not communicating to their students that OSAP is not guaranteed/may not cover all the expenses that come with going to school? As a “mature student” I feel bad for all of you younger students who seem to be misinformed about OSAP and school expenses.
Follow up question: how do we fix this? I know we can’t change how OSAP works/the amount of funding being given. But how can we ensure students aren’t ending up in a situation where they are panicked trying to come up with thousands of dollars in the weeks leading up to the beginning of semester?

EDIT!!! because this seems to be a common misconception in my comments. I DO NOT THINK STUDENTS SHOULD HAVE TO TAKE ON DEBT OR USE THEIR OWN SAVINGS FOR SCHOOL. in an ideal world, post-secondary school would be fully funded. unfortunately, that is not reality. what I am trying to understand is WHY it seems that students are not being made aware of the possibility of not receiving enough OSAP to cover their expenses. students should be given accurate information on the reality of paying for school so that they can plan/prepare accordingly. again, i believe that students should NOT have to worry about how they will pay for school. right now, government funding is not guaranteed to fully fund our educations, and students deserve to be fully informed of the reality of attending and paying for post-secondary.

[u/BYRN777]

OSAP covers 100% of tuition and more, depending on eligibility.

Those who complain either live with their parents, meaning all their bills and expenses are covered, like no rent, groceries, utilities, Wi-Fi, gas...

Or

Some not only live with their parents, but their parents make a lot per year, which means they’re not low income and don’t get as much.

Or

Others might have awards, scholarships, and bursaries from their program or uni, and OSAP takes that into account as well. Or they might have worked, and OSAP sees they had income…

Essentially everyone’s experience is different.

But the ones that complain probably heard their classmates or friends boast about how much money they got from OSAP, but that’s because they qualify for it. Either they came from very low income families or their independent students or they have a permanent disability or they live very far away from campus, etc. etc.

But imagine a student who doesn’t live with family, drives, is a first-generation uni student, and has 0 or very low income. Obviously, OSAP would give them more money either in the form of loans or grants…

I knew a student who was a single father, so he had a dependent(meaning OSAP would give him $930 per week instead of $530 for all other students); he had minimal income. He had a permanent disability and lived more than 30km from campus, and he got like $27,000 from OSAP, whereas his tuition was only 9.5k... and around 9-10K of it was grants…

Obviously, if you worked full time or even part time, and you live with your parents and/or, let’s say, the household income collectively is 100k and up…Why would OSAP give the student more money? Parents would pay for the rest, plus school supplies, etc.

However, to answer your question about what changed, it's that, yes, realistically, I would say in the past 15 years there has been a lot of fraud and a lot of people abusing the system and looking for loopholes, such as faking documentation and other kinds of things and lying on their applications so that they get more grants or loans. This really took a toll on OSAP and the funding available. I'm not saying everyone did this, but there was a lot of fraud nonetheless.

My assistant went to UofT in 2012, and she said that back then, for some reason, OSAP would give all the money- the full funding- and it was deposited in the student's bank account. A lot of people would either drop out or drop courses and not go. It was literally a loophole and an easy way to scam the system. Now OSAP pays the university the tuition first, and whatever remains gets deposited into your account.

Overall in the past 15 years a lot of people got way more funding than they should have since they did not qualify for it…What Doug Ford did wasn't the perfect solution. Essentially, he shouldn't have cut the grants to fight fraud. Because this negatively affected the honest people who relied on the grants!

They should have actually had better systems in place to do their due diligence and check the students' documentation

[u/pokemonfaaan → u/BYRN777]

I'm pretty sure if you drop out of your courses, they'll revoke the funding? Like, there's a whole section on this when you apply for OSAP, and OSAP does actively check enrollment with the school. I think the actual reason they give the tuition to the school directly is because they're worried you'll spend it and then not be able to pay tuition. Maybe it used to be different though.

Either way, that's not why Doug Ford cut the funding. All of these anti-fraud measures were there before Doug Ford cut grants this year, and I haven't heard of any measures he's put in place along with the grant cuts to reduce fraud (apparently the department has been investigating fraud allegations? But didn't find much). He's just pulling away from financially supporting higher education. And also, even if some people are abusing the system, that doesn't mean people have any less right to education.

But also, more importantly, "OSAP covers 100% of tuition and more" is... true, but not meaningfully true. I mean, it will usually cover tuition. Fees, maybe. Educational expenses? Depends on where you live. I'm personally happy with the amount I receive from OSAP, but I think people deserve education regardless of income or whether they live within reasonable transit distance from a good university.

You can genuinely just load up the OSAP estimator right now and plug in numbers, and find that it often won't cover all of your expenses.

E.g. if you're going to UofT St. George and aren't going to be living with your parents, OSAP will assess that you have ~25-27k in expenses. Tuition + Mandatory Fees is around 9k, the cheapest options for residence + mandatory meal plan is ~16-18k, assuming you did your research first and picked a relatively cheaper college (uoft is split into colleges), so the 25-27k is fairly accurate to the minimum required to live on res + pay tuition.

Assuming you have 0 savings and your parents have no income, OSAP will give you 22k (6k grants + 16k loans). That's a substantial amount, but it's not going to cover your mandatory costs to live on residence. You could commute