by Catherine Mwitta for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics
OSAP changes have been implemented, and they're hurting Canadians in more ways than one.
This article is the first in a series addressing four key challenges the next generation of Ontarians will face: Climate catastrophe, education reform, the housing crisis, and career opportunities.
Editor's Note:
The following article reflects the views & analysis of the author. As with all opinion and essay submissions, the piece has been edited for clarity and reviewed carefully for factual accuracy, but the interpretations & arguments are the author’s own. The 44 North publishes an array of perspectives & voices to encourage and ensure thoughtful engagement with complex social, political, historical, and cultural issues.
Doug Ford’s changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) came into effect on Aug. 1: The maximum portion of provincial funding provided as non-repayable grants dropped from 85 percent to 25 percent. The remaining 75 percent (or more) is now distributed as repayable loans. But there hasn’t just been a change to OSAP; the seven-year tuition freeze for publicly assisted colleges and universities has also ended. Schools are permitted to raise tuition rates by up to two per cent annually over a three-year period.
The direct impact of these changes
Students are not only navigating a higher loans-to-grants ratio—they’re also receiving less OSAP funding for 2026/2027. This often means taking on side jobs to pay for the rest of their tuition, let alone other cost-of-living expenses. In addition to tuition fees, students must pay out-of-pocket for ancillary, technology, lab, exam, and administrative fees, which can add up to hundreds of dollars each year. The list of costs grows to include course materials such as textbooks, kits, required software, phone plans, transit fares, and housing and food if students aren’t living with parents/guardians.
The cost of higher education is increasing in more ways than one, and those most affected are private college students, middle-class families and returning adult students. Students attending private colleges will receive all of their provincial funding as loans. While the OSAP grant was specifically designed to help middle-class families, changing the grant-to-loan ratio will profoundly affect students who don’t quite meet the threshold for social assistance but also lack sufficient funds to support their postsecondary education without government support. Lower-income students can still benefit from Ontario's enhanced Student Access Guarantee (SAG), a bursary designed to help cover the gap between OSAP and direct program costs (tuition, books, and mandatory fees). If lower-income students receive SAG, they don't need to repay the grant.
How students and the government are responding
Shortly after the announcement of these changes to OSAP in February 2026, many Canadians protested the policy change at Queen's Park. However, unlike when the Ford government faced harsh backlash for introducing Bill 60—a proposal that would have replaced evergreen month-to-month leases with fixed-term alternatives—which ultimately led them to withdraw it, the OSAP changes have remained in place.
The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) and College Student Alliance (CSA) surveyed students about the new OSAP changes. “Surveyed students reported that 43 percent of those pursuing an undergraduate degree rely on OSAP funding to cover more than half of the costs of completing their education. [...] 63 percent of university students stated that they were concerned about the accumulation of debt and being burdened with long-term debt after graduation.”
Ford stands by his decision, citing in an early August conference,“[T]he auditor said what we [were] giving [in grants] before was unacceptable, unsustainable.”
What does this mean for Canadian youth?
In North American culture, education has long been recognized as the safest path to upward economic mobility, yet today, the price of a degree seems to be lifelong debt. Furthermore, while postsecondary tuition rises, entry-level roles are disappearing due to the current job shortage and companies' increased use of AI to automate tasks like data entry. Statistics Canada found that the average rate of unemployment in Canada was at 10 percent for those with Bachelor’s degrees, and nine percent for those with graduate or doctorate degrees.
Education has also always been an avenue of opportunity for first-generation immigrants like me. My father didn't earn his engineering degree until his late 50s. My mother became a personal support worker in her early 40s. Both were in different industries before their career transitions, and those transitions wouldn’t have been possible without government support. As someone considering returning to college to complete a Master's in Fine Arts, the change in the distribution of OSAP funds would balloon my existing undergraduate loans. I don’t know if I’ll ever pay them off.
Higher education was once seen as the solution for Canadians to gain economic stability. The Ford government’s divestment from postsecondary tuition funding sends a clear message to those living in Ontario that a cultural shift has occurred. If access to education is slowly becoming a privilege available only to the wealthy, what does that mean for young Canadians from lower-income backgrounds who want to improve their living circumstances?
When barriers to postsecondary schools—which offer networking, training and internships—are created, this affects not just disenfranchised Canadians. Our education system needs reform, but I fear this won’t happen without a change in government and its priorities. I can only hope that the effects of this policy won’t be irreversible by the time we see these changes.
Stay tuned for the second part of this article series, which will dive into the current state of the job market and how young Canadians are finding their footing in the workforce as the U.S.-Canada trade war continues and AI replaces entry-level jobs.
Catherine Mwitta has a bachelor’s in creative writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University and a certification in Journalism from Langara College. She is an editor at Augur Magazine and INKspire. Likewise, bylines at Stir Vancouver, SAD Mag, This Magazine, C Magazine and Bluffs Monitor.
