Students at private career colleges in Ottawa are covered by an Ontario-wide freeze on student aid, after the province paused all OSAP payments to career college students while an audit of the private post-secondary sector is ongoing.
The pause applies to career college students across Ontario, so it reaches anyone in Ottawa who relies on OSAP to pay for a program at one of these schools. It is not yet known how many Ottawa students are affected.
What the province has done
According to Minister Nolan Quinn, the province referred the matter to the Ontario Provincial Police on Friday. The ministry had already asked KPMG in August to begin an audit, after launching targeted inspections of career colleges the year before.
Quinn pointed to "serious concerns about the integrity of the OSAP system in the private post-secondary sector." The government has also paused all OSAP payments for career college students while the audit is ongoing.
The ministry says 242 institutions were eligible for OSAP, which gives a sense of how many schools sit inside the pause.
Colleges and students caught in the middle
The freeze lands hardest on schools that depend on student aid. Laleh Bighash of AAPS College said roughly 75 to 80 per cent of its students use OSAP.
Bighash also pointed to students who are already partway through their programs. Those students are currently in college and half paid through the program, she said, and "at this point there is no clarity on how to deal with the students who've been caught in the middle."
Career Colleges Ontario, the sector's association, said it is "not fair that students across the sector who have done nothing wrong are now being impacted."
Quinn acknowledged the stakes for the schools themselves: "Unfortunately, there will be some colleges that are not going to be able to survive through this." For students, a college that cannot continue operating raises the question of what happens to a program they have already started paying for.
What happens next
The government has said it plans legislation this fall to make online-only programs at private career colleges ineligible again for OSAP.
As an interim measure, it is discussing options for low-interest, third-party loans for career college students with banks. No details on terms, eligibility or timing have been announced.
The province has also not said how long the audit will take, or when OSAP payments to career college students could resume. Until it does, students in Ottawa and across Ontario who depend on that funding are left waiting on answers from their schools and from the ministry.
Students who are unsure where they stand are best placed to ask their college directly what the pause means for their tuition and their program, since the province has not yet laid out a plan for those partway through.
Sources: Global News (Canadian Press), Global News
