WEBVTT
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The government, when it cut OSAP in February, they said it was because the system was becoming unsustainable.
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It's now clear that the reason it was becoming unsustainable was because of all this malfeasance in a handful of private colleges.
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They knew that.
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They knew that at the time, and they had a chance to do that to make the system more sustainable.
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Instead, they cut grants to students.
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It took everything from under me.
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We are not only fighting the government, now we're fighting Trillium 2.
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We're supposed to graduate in February.
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That doesn't look like it's gonna happen.
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If you talk to young Canadians, you hear a familiar refrain.
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I got the degree, I took on the debt, I did everything right.
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So why am I still struggling to land a decent paying job?
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Governments spend billions of dollars funding post-secondary education.
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And in Ontario, hundreds of millions of dollars in OSAP funding have been frozen, and the Ontario Provincial Police have been called in to investigate fraud.
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The decision that will impact thousands of students here in Ottawa and across Ontario.
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Possible criminal activity concerning OSAP payments, irregularities with OSAP and private career colleges.
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As a result, the government has paused all OSAP payments associated with private post-secondary institutions while the audit proceeds.
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Meanwhile, tuition keeps rising, and many in Gen Z are questioning whether post-secondary education offers the same value it did for previous generations.
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So how do we get here and where's all that money going?
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Demographics, hosted by Mike Moffitt and Kara Stern.
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To help us unpack it, we're joined by Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates and author of the annual State of Postsecondary Education in Canada report.
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Welcome.
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Thanks so much for joining us and coming back to the show.
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Hi, Kara.
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I've been hearing about how like a bunch of students have had their OSAP funding cut because of a scandal at seven career colleges.
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So I guess my first question, let's just start with like, what are career colleges?
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So career colleges are uh a subset of private institutions.
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We do have some private universities in this province, places like Yorkville University, but private career colleges are tend to be offering programs of a year or so in length, sometimes a little bit longer.
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They tend to be very focused on getting people into jobs quickly.
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So you know, the names that you would know maybe from just watching ads on TV.
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At Twilas College of Information Technologies, join other successful graduates of Tredit Institute.
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If it's a career college, it means it doesn't give out a degree.
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They tend to be very focused on short-term credentials that will get people back into the labor market.
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If you take a four-year program, what you learn in the first year could be outdated by year three.
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Learn hands-on fast at Academy of Learning.
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So what's the scandal about?
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Starting about three or four years ago, there were a number of private career colleges.
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The number differs because in different reports, because some of them are chains, right?
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So the Academy of Learning is a chain.
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It's got spots in Brantford, it's got spots in different parts of the province.
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Started enrolling a lot more students.
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And I would say it's not entirely clear exactly how this happened.
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It seemed to be a scam that uh involved immigration consultants.
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The schemes were about getting new Canadians involved.
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And often it seems they were told they could get thousands of dollars just by, you know, click on a button and we'll get you thousands of dollars, which is in itself is illegal.
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You can't have third parties applying for student aid for you.
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In student aid, what happens is you they figure out how much you need, and the institution takes its cut before any money goes to the student.
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So, in a lot of cases, what was going on was the students got no money.
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It was the institutions that got the money.
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The students would get some kind of credential, you know, what the teaching was, this is going to vary a little bit from place to place.
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But in some of the investigations that have occurred to date, you know, they were looking at students who were finishing their tests in five minutes or something like that.
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So they weren't real courses they were being involved in.
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And the amounts of money involved are staggering.
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Okay.
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The stories that we've seen to date talk about numbers in the region of$380 million that went out to these institutions.
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That's probably correct up to 2024-25.
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But what we don't have any data about is how much was spent in 2025-26.
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And if you go back to a document that the government released in February of this year, there's this extra billion dollars in spending that no one's been able to explain.
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What it looks like is actually that scam kept going into 25-26.
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Could be up to an extra billion dollars that went out this way.
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It's a lot of money.
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Are the students involved in the scam, or is this just something that the colleges are doing?
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In some cases, the students didn't know they were enrolled, right?
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Like so if the federal government didn't enroll, because the federal government shares some of these costs with the government of Ontario, and they were finding that in fact, this is outright fraud.
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This is immigration people saying, click this button, you'll get some money.
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And I think, I mean, it's not clear what this how the scam worked exactly, at least to me.
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But some people clearly didn't, they were not in on the fraud.
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All the money went to the institutions.
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We know that the province knew as early as the end of 2024 that there were some bad actors in the private college sector.
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And you wrote a blog post where you kind of inferred that the scandal was being used to justify cutting grants to public university students in the most recent provincial budget.
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Why did the government do that?
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That's the$64,000 question.
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Nobody knows why they did it.
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But it's absolutely clear the government, when it cut OSAP in February, and it cut it by about three-quarters of the amount of grants going to students.
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They said it was because the system was becoming unsustainable.
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It's now clear that the reason it was becoming unsustainable was because of all this malfeasance in a handful of private colleges.
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They knew that.
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They knew that at the time.
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The Association of Career Colleges, they were saying these colleges are doing bad things.
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You have to stop giving them money.
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And they had a chance to do that to make the system more sustainable.
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Instead, they cut grants to students in February.
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And it wasn't until May of this year or June of this year that they actually put some limits on those specific colleges and cut them off from the system.
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That's wild.
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Like they knew so much money was being wasted and they just didn't care about it at the time.
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Like they didn't do anything about it.
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Not as far as we can tell.
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Wow.
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And now they've paused OSAP payments to private institutions altogether, right?
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Like not just the ones that were part of the scam, but all private institutions.
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Why?
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I think it's a distraction.
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The first time I was on your show, if you recall, we were talking about uh public-private partnerships and international students and how the government of Ontario kept pouring gasoline on the fire of too many international students.
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They got out of that whole situation without too much political damage.
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And one of the ways that they did that was they said privates are bad actors.
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Private higher education doesn't have a lot of friends in this country.
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So if you just point to privates and say bad, people will forgive you a whole bunch of other stuff.
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I think it's exactly what they're doing right now.
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They don't have to answer questions about why they let a particular five or eight or however many institutions you want to call it, uh go on doing all this malfeasance if they keep saying private's bad.
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And but to make that look plausible, they've cut all the privates off.
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And there are a lot of private institutions that are going to go under.
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The statement that the provincial government put out yesterday suggests we're probably looking at March or April at the earliest.
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And so we're talking about companies that will not be able to enroll sick students for six months.
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Now, some of the, you know, places like Yorkville University, they might be able to keep going.
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That's not a big deal.
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National Ballet School, that's another technically, it's a private career college.
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They'll be fine.
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But boy, there's a lot of other ones, you know, sort of small mom and pop shops in particular, which I think are going to be in a lot of trouble.
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We've already had one cease taking new students uh up in Sudbury.
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These private colleges, are they ones that were getting money through the Skills Development Fund as well?
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Some of them would have, yeah.
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I mean, I'm not sure which ones, but yes, so they would have been eligible for that kind of money as well.
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It seemed like they were trying to push money towards some of the private sector uh universities and colleges while not funding the public ones and now trying to say, well, private's bad.
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And I'm like, well, is it bad?
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Because you guys seem to like it before.
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And clearly, one of the reasons that they were defending these malfeasant colleges was precisely because they were private.
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Like I think that's part of it.
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I mean, there could be issues about money going back and forth.
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And I'd sure like to see the the political donations report on the people who were running these colleges.
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But I do think that they would just sort of say private's good.
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And therefore, they didn't want to look too closely at it.
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What happens to the students that are like in the middle of a program at these places or expected to start?
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Maybe they started, I guess, probably in September, and all of a sudden they don't have any money.
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What's happening to them?
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They're going without and they're dropping out of school.
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Career colleges don't work quite like colleges and universities in the sense that they don't necessarily have semesters.
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One of the really big selling features of private career colleges is they start all the time, right?
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They don't make you wait until you know four months or eight months for the next intake to start.
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They're like, yeah, we got a class starting Friday.
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That's a big deal for people, you know.
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I think, you know, particularly if you're a little bit older or you've got kids, you don't want to wait around for the education that you want.
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But nobody can get aid now.
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So who's going to enroll?
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Wild story.
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So they knew that all this money was being spent.
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And instead of stopping the bad actors, they just said, we're just going to stop handing out OSAP to private colleges.
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That's horrible because then, yeah, there's so many people who are stuck in the middle of that, who are in school right now trying to, you know, get better career prospects.
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They're going to end up spending so much more money than they expected, maybe not even be able to pay for it, as you said.
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Are the colleges letting them continue and hoping this gets sorted out?
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Or are they just like, sorry, can't pay your out?
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I don't think anyone's saying can't pay your out.
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I mean, it could be.
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There's so many of them.
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I mean, there's hundreds of community colleges.
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There are some places that are just saying we're not taking new students.
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The province could have stopped this at any time.
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The power powers that provinces have over private colleges are extensive.
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They could literally walk into any college at any time and say, give me your data, give me your files.
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They could have done it at any time.
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It seems to me that they chose not to.
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I don't understand why.
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It's so weird.
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Like I know it's just speculation that you don't know the answer either, and no one's going to know the answer because I don't think they're going to share it.
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And you can't do a freedom of information requests anymore now that the provincial government has decided to opt out of that.
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So I'm like, I don't even know how people can look into this and find out what's going on, what's the real story here?
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So they haven't quite got rid of everything in FOI.
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You know, I think Allison Jones of Canadian Press has done a fantastic job using FOI.
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Kelly Grant at the Globe, who is who is writing a big story on this very shortly.
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They can get it from the bureaucrats.
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You can still get stuff from the bureaucrats and court files now.
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Remember, so a lot of this is now in court.
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Some of these colleges are suing the province.
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And so they're putting documents in the public record about when the discussions happened and who knew what when.
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So there's there's an increasing amount of information out there.
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We'll get to the bottom of this story relatively quickly, I would think.
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Yeah, we hope we'll have you back to talk about what happens once we have the answers to it.
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But I wanted to ask you some other questions because, like, part of the reason we wanted to have you back on is because you do a lot of this analysis.
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One of the things that I know that you hear a lot from young people and that I hear a lot from young people is whether investing in post-secondary education is going to pay off for them the same way it did for their parents.
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A lot of them are Gen Xers or Boomers.
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And I was wondering like, how different is it that experience for them in reality?
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It's pretty similar to Gen X.
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In some ways, it's better than Gen X, actually.
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How?
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Gen X was Gen X had a terrible time.
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It's nothing as good as what the boomers had.
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It seems like over time, the number of credentials you need to do basic jobs has gone up.
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That happened, like boomers could make a lot of money earlier on in their career, which of course, if you're working until you're 65, let's say, that's a lot of time, that's extra time that you're spending making money instead of paying money.
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But you're saying it was different for Gen X, people shouldn't really compare.
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How come?
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Roughly four times the percentage of people who got degrees 60 years ago when the boomers were there, are getting them today.
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So, you know, back then 10% of the population got a university degree.
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Now it's 40%, and another 30, some percent, some kind of college, and then a little bit of trades on top of that.
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So a lot more people get a university credential than they used to.
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And that's the biggest increase in time spent in school by far.
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Just in this century, the percentage of young people that is 25 to 34 who have a master's degree or above, that's gone from about 7% to 12%.
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So that's some of that credential inflation that you're talking about.
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It's still a fairly small group of people.
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I mean, it's only an extra 5% who've gone to get that second degree.
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I mean, it is going up, but it's not a huge number of people.
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The big increase in time spent in school is just people going from no university to university.
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Then having so many more people in the university program then means that if everyone has it, you're not standing out as much, in which case, like it kind of makes it that the job market is so difficult, where if you don't have a degree, you're competing against so many people who do for jobs that probably don't really need it.
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I would say there's at least two issues in there.
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And one is that just people, yes, there is credential inflation going on.
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There is professionalization.
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You're a journalist.
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Journalist 60 years ago, that was not a profession that needed a degree.
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Even 30 years ago, not everybody needed a degree or a credential.
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It's kind of got to the point where it's 100% now.
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Certain types of nursing require extra credentials, certain types of you know, dietitians.
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And so there's a there is a lot of credential adding, and it's gatekeeping by people in the profession who want to keep some people out, right?
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You know, as you say, it's kind of like an arms race.
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As more and more people are chasing a certain number of jobs, they're just going to get education that they don't need this to stand out, if you want.
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That is a bit of a problem.
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The other thing you got to remember though is that the number of jobs that genuinely require higher education, and we can debate a bit about what that means, has gone up quite a bit as well.
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And so the result is that actually like the starting salaries of graduates now versus the starting salaries of graduates 20 years ago, pretty similar.
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Pretty similar.
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It did drop for a while when we had a really big explosion of students.
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So, right after, if you remember the double cohort, we ended grade 13 or whatever they called it, the OACs at the time, and we put two cohorts of of high school graduates through university at the same time.
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Graduate salaries went down quite a bit for a number of years, but they've risen again in the last decade or so.
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Not everybody's gone up.
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Humanities, uh, science have not done very well in the last 10, 15 years.
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Math, business, uh, health, they've done pretty well the last 15 years.
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So again, it's it's averages.
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It's certainly true that some fields of study, it's not anything like as good as it was 20 years ago, but in some it's better.
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But if you can get a post-secondary education, should you get it if you can afford to do it?
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It always depends on what you're paying in tuition, right?
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In most places, if it's a public university, you're paying$8,000 in tuition, another$1,500 in fees of different kinds, and you're doing it for say four years,$40,000, that's a car.
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It'll save you through your lifetime.
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I think what people get upset about these days, particularly as you know, cost of housing and and things like that go up, is they wish it took less time.
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It's not so much the tuition that matters, it's the number of years you pay it.
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And I I you know tell my clients a lot, I'm like, guys, you got to start.
00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:14.320
We didn't always have four-year degrees.
00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:21.200
Like back in the late 20th century, three-year degrees were still the most common in Ontario.
00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:22.720
They still are in Manitoba.
00:15:22.879 --> 00:15:27.840
People mostly do three years and they get a bachelor's, and if and only if they get the fourth year, then you get an honors.
00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:30.000
And I think that's part of the issue, right?
00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:32.559
People just want to get their careers started faster.
00:15:32.639 --> 00:15:35.919
And people want to get out of the classroom faster.
00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:40.480
And we've done an okay job of that in Canada by bringing things like co-op and internships.
00:15:40.559 --> 00:15:47.039
And people can, it's it's a little easier for people to earn money now than it was 30 years ago while in school.
00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:50.879
But I think that that's that's really the issue, is you know, what's that fourth year for?
00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:54.480
You know, we've been doing a lot of shows about why people are having fewer kids.
00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:59.519
And one thing I hear when I look at some of this information is that people like they don't feel established in their career until later.
00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:05.440
And of course they don't feel established in their career until later because they don't even try to start their career until much later than previous generations.
00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:07.039
It just seems like there's so many knock-on effects.
00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:10.240
But I guess you mentioned housing, and I bet if they solve housing, that would go a long way.
00:16:10.559 --> 00:16:13.360
I hear you have some connection with that in the show.
00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:13.600
Yeah.
00:16:13.840 --> 00:16:20.720
Yeah, like I just think of with the cost, like when you said that there's more opportunities to make money while being in school, yes.
00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:26.480
But then I'm like, well, but I always heard about from, especially the boomers in my life, I've heard about how they used to be able to pay it off in the summer.
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:30.080
They'd go to university, work in the summer, pay it off, easy peasy.
00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:36.240
And now it's like you have to work and you're still not going to be able to pay for your tuition and definitely not with tuition and rent.
00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:38.559
So again, that's that what are you comparing to?
00:16:38.639 --> 00:16:41.120
If you're comparing to 30 years ago, are you comparing to 60 years ago?
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:43.279
60 years ago, absolutely true.
00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:48.879
You know, people would go, you know, work on highways or cut down forests because that's what we were doing in the 60s.
00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:50.240
They could make a lot of money.
00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:54.720
And one of the reasons they could do that is frankly, uh, professors made less, right?
00:16:54.879 --> 00:16:57.759
So the the cost of providing education was lower.
00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:00.960
There were only a quarter as many students, remember?
00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:06.559
So it's easier for government to pay for higher education when only 10% of people go.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:10.079
It's a lot harder to keep up that standard if 40% go.
00:17:10.240 --> 00:17:18.640
And so a lot of the ways that we paid for massification, the way that we gave more people a chance to go to university was by shifting some of the costs onto those students.
00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:22.079
And we said, well, you know, they're still going to make money over their lifetime.
00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:23.519
And yeah, that's absolutely true.
00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:25.119
They will make money after their lifetime.
00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:28.640
But as you put it, it's gonna be, it's gonna take a little longer to get there.
00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:29.680
How do we solve this?
00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:31.039
Like, is that the kind of thing you're saying?
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:35.599
You talk to universities and to say, maybe you don't need a four-year degree, maybe you need a three-year degree.
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:37.440
Like, how do we get out of this problem?
00:17:37.759 --> 00:17:38.880
There's no simple way.
00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:44.960
Uh, because again, that the those gatekeeping functions of degrees will kick in pretty fast, right?
00:17:45.119 --> 00:17:53.759
There are a lot of accreditation agencies out there in health and engineering and other fields where we could just say, actually, you don't, we don't need to do this.
00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:56.079
We don't need to always add things on.
00:17:56.240 --> 00:17:59.200
You know, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, how many years do you need to be a doctor?
00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:00.640
Does it really need to be eight years?
00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:02.720
In other countries, it's not always eight years.
00:18:02.799 --> 00:18:05.200
Uh, a bachelor's degree, does it need to be four years?
00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:06.079
In Europe, it's three.
00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:07.680
Mix think of teachers in Ontario.
00:18:07.759 --> 00:18:09.119
I've had too many teachers, I believe.
00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.079
And so they increased how long it takes, and then they got a shortage.
00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.160
And then I heard they decreased it since then, right?
00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:16.319
That's a that's a perfect example, right?
00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.839
And and there's just that's useful.
00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:19.519
I mean, it's just it's ridiculous.
00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:22.400
People talk about, you know, a degree is not an automatic guarantee.
00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:24.559
And like, that hasn't been true since 1973.
00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:27.440
Like, you got to go back to the oil crisis before that was true.
00:18:27.599 --> 00:18:33.200
Youth unemployment now, or graduate unemployment now, pretty close to where it was in 1976.
00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:36.000
Like, we've been in this situation a long time.
00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:44.799
What's better now that wasn't true 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago, tuition was lower, but we got a lot more student aid than we used to, right?
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:53.039
So the the amount of grants and tax credits and non-repayable aid in the system is now about three times what it was 25 years ago.
00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:58.000
And that's why I always say, like, actually, the worst time to have been a student was about 1994 to 1998.
00:18:58.079 --> 00:19:01.039
Those were the years that were really tuition fees were going up.
00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:08.480
We were cutting grants at the time, we were making more student loans, and they were graduating into the last really bad economy that we've seen, right?
00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:11.680
The 1990s economy was was still much worse than it is today.
00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:14.559
And then it got really good really fast in the early 2000s.
00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:16.400
And so those students, yeah, they did okay.
00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:23.920
And like I say, you know, now we give out more money in various forms of student aid, be it scholarships or grants or tax credits.
00:19:24.079 --> 00:19:28.319
We actually give out more aid to students than we take in in tuition.
00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:30.880
We have what I call net zero tuition.
00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:32.799
Uh well, that was true until the OSAP cuts.
00:19:32.960 --> 00:19:34.240
I'm not sure it's true anymore.
00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:42.400
But yeah, I think uh the last year I checked this, we gave out$13 billion in non-repayable aid and we took in$11 billion in domestic tuition fees.
00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:43.759
We are a generous system.
00:19:43.839 --> 00:19:47.279
We're just kind of opaque uh with the way that we hand out the money.
00:19:47.599 --> 00:19:50.880
Looking forward to having you back once we know more information about what's happened.
00:19:51.200 --> 00:19:54.240
It's wild to me that we can see this government do this.
00:19:54.319 --> 00:20:01.279
Like it just it's really frustrating when you see a government know there's a problem, can see it coming, and they just don't do anything about it.
00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:03.039
And then there's this bunch of collateral.
00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:04.000
Like that's that's really sad.
00:20:04.240 --> 00:20:07.359
Yeah, it's even sadder in that there doesn't appear to be a lot of accountability for it.
00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:08.559
That's what you're here for.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:10.960
Uh, thank you everyone for watching and listening.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:19.039
The producer of this episode is Meredith Martin, who, for full disclosure, our guest happens to be dating, and it's been edited by Canadian Civil, who our guest is not dating.
00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:24.000
And if you feel like your degree went on too long and maybe didn't need to be as long as it was, I'd love to hear about it.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:25.839
Please post your story in the comments.
00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:27.599
And we'll see you next time.
00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:06.000
The government, when it cut OSAP in February, they said it was because the system was becoming unsustainable.
00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:13.359
It's now clear that the reason it was becoming unsustainable was because of all this malfeasance in a handful of private colleges.
00:00:13.519 --> 00:00:14.160
They knew that.
00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:18.800
They knew that at the time, and they had a chance to do that to make the system more sustainable.
00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:20.879
Instead, they cut grants to students.
00:00:21.199 --> 00:00:22.960
It took everything from under me.
00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:26.239
We are not only fighting the government, now we're fighting Trillium 2.
00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:28.480
We're supposed to graduate in February.
00:00:28.640 --> 00:00:30.160
That doesn't look like it's gonna happen.
00:00:30.399 --> 00:00:33.520
If you talk to young Canadians, you hear a familiar refrain.
00:00:33.759 --> 00:00:36.799
I got the degree, I took on the debt, I did everything right.
00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:40.000
So why am I still struggling to land a decent paying job?
00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:44.399
Governments spend billions of dollars funding post-secondary education.
00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:52.399
And in Ontario, hundreds of millions of dollars in OSAP funding have been frozen, and the Ontario Provincial Police have been called in to investigate fraud.
00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:56.560
The decision that will impact thousands of students here in Ottawa and across Ontario.
00:00:56.799 --> 00:01:03.679
Possible criminal activity concerning OSAP payments, irregularities with OSAP and private career colleges.
00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:11.920
As a result, the government has paused all OSAP payments associated with private post-secondary institutions while the audit proceeds.
00:01:12.239 --> 00:01:20.400
Meanwhile, tuition keeps rising, and many in Gen Z are questioning whether post-secondary education offers the same value it did for previous generations.
00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:23.040
So how do we get here and where's all that money going?
00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:26.799
Demographics, hosted by Mike Moffitt and Kara Stern.
00:01:27.439 --> 00:01:37.280
To help us unpack it, we're joined by Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates and author of the annual State of Postsecondary Education in Canada report.
00:01:37.519 --> 00:01:37.840
Welcome.
00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:39.760
Thanks so much for joining us and coming back to the show.
00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:40.480
Hi, Kara.
00:01:40.719 --> 00:01:47.920
I've been hearing about how like a bunch of students have had their OSAP funding cut because of a scandal at seven career colleges.
00:01:48.079 --> 00:01:51.519
So I guess my first question, let's just start with like, what are career colleges?
00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:56.000
So career colleges are uh a subset of private institutions.
00:01:56.159 --> 00:02:06.560
We do have some private universities in this province, places like Yorkville University, but private career colleges are tend to be offering programs of a year or so in length, sometimes a little bit longer.
00:02:06.719 --> 00:02:09.680
They tend to be very focused on getting people into jobs quickly.
00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:14.240
So you know, the names that you would know maybe from just watching ads on TV.
00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:19.759
At Twilas College of Information Technologies, join other successful graduates of Tredit Institute.
00:02:20.159 --> 00:02:22.719
If it's a career college, it means it doesn't give out a degree.
00:02:22.879 --> 00:02:28.800
They tend to be very focused on short-term credentials that will get people back into the labor market.
00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:33.759
If you take a four-year program, what you learn in the first year could be outdated by year three.
00:02:33.919 --> 00:02:37.039
Learn hands-on fast at Academy of Learning.
00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:38.479
So what's the scandal about?
00:02:38.879 --> 00:02:43.520
Starting about three or four years ago, there were a number of private career colleges.
00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:48.960
The number differs because in different reports, because some of them are chains, right?
00:02:49.039 --> 00:02:50.479
So the Academy of Learning is a chain.
00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:53.599
It's got spots in Brantford, it's got spots in different parts of the province.
00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:56.000
Started enrolling a lot more students.
00:02:56.639 --> 00:03:00.159
And I would say it's not entirely clear exactly how this happened.
00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:06.639
It seemed to be a scam that uh involved immigration consultants.
00:03:06.879 --> 00:03:10.800
The schemes were about getting new Canadians involved.
00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:20.080
And often it seems they were told they could get thousands of dollars just by, you know, click on a button and we'll get you thousands of dollars, which is in itself is illegal.
00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:23.360
You can't have third parties applying for student aid for you.
00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:30.560
In student aid, what happens is you they figure out how much you need, and the institution takes its cut before any money goes to the student.
00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:34.960
So, in a lot of cases, what was going on was the students got no money.
00:03:35.039 --> 00:03:36.639
It was the institutions that got the money.
00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:42.319
The students would get some kind of credential, you know, what the teaching was, this is going to vary a little bit from place to place.
00:03:42.479 --> 00:03:49.759
But in some of the investigations that have occurred to date, you know, they were looking at students who were finishing their tests in five minutes or something like that.
00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:53.439
So they weren't real courses they were being involved in.
00:03:53.599 --> 00:03:56.000
And the amounts of money involved are staggering.
00:03:56.159 --> 00:03:56.319
Okay.
00:03:56.639 --> 00:04:03.840
The stories that we've seen to date talk about numbers in the region of$380 million that went out to these institutions.
00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:07.120
That's probably correct up to 2024-25.
00:04:07.199 --> 00:04:12.080
But what we don't have any data about is how much was spent in 2025-26.
00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:22.639
And if you go back to a document that the government released in February of this year, there's this extra billion dollars in spending that no one's been able to explain.
00:04:22.879 --> 00:04:27.600
What it looks like is actually that scam kept going into 25-26.
00:04:27.759 --> 00:04:30.639
Could be up to an extra billion dollars that went out this way.
00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:31.600
It's a lot of money.
00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:35.839
Are the students involved in the scam, or is this just something that the colleges are doing?
00:04:36.079 --> 00:04:39.040
In some cases, the students didn't know they were enrolled, right?
00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:47.759
Like so if the federal government didn't enroll, because the federal government shares some of these costs with the government of Ontario, and they were finding that in fact, this is outright fraud.
00:04:47.839 --> 00:04:51.040
This is immigration people saying, click this button, you'll get some money.
00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:55.040
And I think, I mean, it's not clear what this how the scam worked exactly, at least to me.
00:04:55.199 --> 00:04:58.000
But some people clearly didn't, they were not in on the fraud.
00:04:58.079 --> 00:04:59.519
All the money went to the institutions.
00:04:59.839 --> 00:05:06.639
We know that the province knew as early as the end of 2024 that there were some bad actors in the private college sector.
00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:15.279
And you wrote a blog post where you kind of inferred that the scandal was being used to justify cutting grants to public university students in the most recent provincial budget.
00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:16.879
Why did the government do that?
00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:19.600
That's the$64,000 question.
00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:20.879
Nobody knows why they did it.
00:05:20.959 --> 00:05:29.120
But it's absolutely clear the government, when it cut OSAP in February, and it cut it by about three-quarters of the amount of grants going to students.
00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:32.079
They said it was because the system was becoming unsustainable.
00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:39.439
It's now clear that the reason it was becoming unsustainable was because of all this malfeasance in a handful of private colleges.
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:40.480
They knew that.
00:05:40.639 --> 00:05:41.920
They knew that at the time.
00:05:42.079 --> 00:05:46.879
The Association of Career Colleges, they were saying these colleges are doing bad things.
00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:48.959
You have to stop giving them money.
00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:52.240
And they had a chance to do that to make the system more sustainable.
00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:55.600
Instead, they cut grants to students in February.
00:05:55.759 --> 00:06:03.040
And it wasn't until May of this year or June of this year that they actually put some limits on those specific colleges and cut them off from the system.
00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:03.759
That's wild.
00:06:03.839 --> 00:06:08.000
Like they knew so much money was being wasted and they just didn't care about it at the time.
00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:09.439
Like they didn't do anything about it.
00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:10.959
Not as far as we can tell.
00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:11.600
Wow.
00:06:11.759 --> 00:06:16.399
And now they've paused OSAP payments to private institutions altogether, right?
00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:19.360
Like not just the ones that were part of the scam, but all private institutions.
00:06:19.519 --> 00:06:19.759
Why?
00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:21.519
I think it's a distraction.
00:06:22.079 --> 00:06:34.560
The first time I was on your show, if you recall, we were talking about uh public-private partnerships and international students and how the government of Ontario kept pouring gasoline on the fire of too many international students.
00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:37.759
They got out of that whole situation without too much political damage.
00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:42.079
And one of the ways that they did that was they said privates are bad actors.
00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:44.639
Private higher education doesn't have a lot of friends in this country.
00:06:44.720 --> 00:06:49.360
So if you just point to privates and say bad, people will forgive you a whole bunch of other stuff.
00:06:49.439 --> 00:06:51.439
I think it's exactly what they're doing right now.
00:06:51.600 --> 00:07:02.560
They don't have to answer questions about why they let a particular five or eight or however many institutions you want to call it, uh go on doing all this malfeasance if they keep saying private's bad.
00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:06.800
And but to make that look plausible, they've cut all the privates off.
00:07:06.959 --> 00:07:09.279
And there are a lot of private institutions that are going to go under.
00:07:09.439 --> 00:07:15.680
The statement that the provincial government put out yesterday suggests we're probably looking at March or April at the earliest.
00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:20.720
And so we're talking about companies that will not be able to enroll sick students for six months.
00:07:20.879 --> 00:07:25.120
Now, some of the, you know, places like Yorkville University, they might be able to keep going.
00:07:25.199 --> 00:07:25.920
That's not a big deal.
00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:29.199
National Ballet School, that's another technically, it's a private career college.
00:07:29.279 --> 00:07:30.000
They'll be fine.
00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:36.160
But boy, there's a lot of other ones, you know, sort of small mom and pop shops in particular, which I think are going to be in a lot of trouble.
00:07:36.319 --> 00:07:39.600
We've already had one cease taking new students uh up in Sudbury.
00:07:39.920 --> 00:07:44.879
These private colleges, are they ones that were getting money through the Skills Development Fund as well?
00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:46.000
Some of them would have, yeah.
00:07:46.079 --> 00:07:49.680
I mean, I'm not sure which ones, but yes, so they would have been eligible for that kind of money as well.
00:07:50.000 --> 00:08:01.120
It seemed like they were trying to push money towards some of the private sector uh universities and colleges while not funding the public ones and now trying to say, well, private's bad.
00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:02.319
And I'm like, well, is it bad?
00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:03.680
Because you guys seem to like it before.
00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:09.199
And clearly, one of the reasons that they were defending these malfeasant colleges was precisely because they were private.
00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:10.480
Like I think that's part of it.
00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:13.759
I mean, there could be issues about money going back and forth.
00:08:13.839 --> 00:08:20.160
And I'd sure like to see the the political donations report on the people who were running these colleges.
00:08:20.319 --> 00:08:23.600
But I do think that they would just sort of say private's good.
00:08:23.759 --> 00:08:26.319
And therefore, they didn't want to look too closely at it.
00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:30.879
What happens to the students that are like in the middle of a program at these places or expected to start?
00:08:30.959 --> 00:08:35.440
Maybe they started, I guess, probably in September, and all of a sudden they don't have any money.
00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:36.639
What's happening to them?
00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:39.600
They're going without and they're dropping out of school.
00:08:39.759 --> 00:08:44.960
Career colleges don't work quite like colleges and universities in the sense that they don't necessarily have semesters.
00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:50.879
One of the really big selling features of private career colleges is they start all the time, right?
00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:55.120
They don't make you wait until you know four months or eight months for the next intake to start.
00:08:55.200 --> 00:08:57.120
They're like, yeah, we got a class starting Friday.
00:08:57.279 --> 00:08:58.639
That's a big deal for people, you know.
00:08:58.720 --> 00:09:04.480
I think, you know, particularly if you're a little bit older or you've got kids, you don't want to wait around for the education that you want.
00:09:04.639 --> 00:09:06.240
But nobody can get aid now.
00:09:06.399 --> 00:09:07.840
So who's going to enroll?
00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:08.879
Wild story.
00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:11.759
So they knew that all this money was being spent.
00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:17.919
And instead of stopping the bad actors, they just said, we're just going to stop handing out OSAP to private colleges.
00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:25.279
That's horrible because then, yeah, there's so many people who are stuck in the middle of that, who are in school right now trying to, you know, get better career prospects.
00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:29.840
They're going to end up spending so much more money than they expected, maybe not even be able to pay for it, as you said.
00:09:29.919 --> 00:09:33.279
Are the colleges letting them continue and hoping this gets sorted out?
00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:35.279
Or are they just like, sorry, can't pay your out?
00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:37.360
I don't think anyone's saying can't pay your out.
00:09:37.519 --> 00:09:38.080
I mean, it could be.
00:09:39.039 --> 00:09:39.759
There's so many of them.
00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:41.440
I mean, there's hundreds of community colleges.
00:09:41.679 --> 00:09:44.240
There are some places that are just saying we're not taking new students.
00:09:44.399 --> 00:09:46.559
The province could have stopped this at any time.
00:09:46.720 --> 00:09:50.720
The power powers that provinces have over private colleges are extensive.
00:09:50.879 --> 00:09:55.759
They could literally walk into any college at any time and say, give me your data, give me your files.
00:09:55.919 --> 00:09:57.759
They could have done it at any time.
00:09:57.919 --> 00:10:00.000
It seems to me that they chose not to.
00:10:00.559 --> 00:10:01.360
I don't understand why.
00:10:01.519 --> 00:10:02.000
It's so weird.
00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:06.879
Like I know it's just speculation that you don't know the answer either, and no one's going to know the answer because I don't think they're going to share it.
00:10:06.960 --> 00:10:12.559
And you can't do a freedom of information requests anymore now that the provincial government has decided to opt out of that.
00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:17.679
So I'm like, I don't even know how people can look into this and find out what's going on, what's the real story here?
00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:21.200
So they haven't quite got rid of everything in FOI.
00:10:21.279 --> 00:10:24.799
You know, I think Allison Jones of Canadian Press has done a fantastic job using FOI.
00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:28.559
Kelly Grant at the Globe, who is who is writing a big story on this very shortly.
00:10:28.879 --> 00:10:30.320
They can get it from the bureaucrats.
00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:34.399
You can still get stuff from the bureaucrats and court files now.
00:10:34.480 --> 00:10:36.159
Remember, so a lot of this is now in court.
00:10:36.399 --> 00:10:38.399
Some of these colleges are suing the province.
00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:43.679
And so they're putting documents in the public record about when the discussions happened and who knew what when.
00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:46.559
So there's there's an increasing amount of information out there.
00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:49.679
We'll get to the bottom of this story relatively quickly, I would think.
00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:52.720
Yeah, we hope we'll have you back to talk about what happens once we have the answers to it.
00:10:52.799 --> 00:10:59.200
But I wanted to ask you some other questions because, like, part of the reason we wanted to have you back on is because you do a lot of this analysis.
00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:09.679
One of the things that I know that you hear a lot from young people and that I hear a lot from young people is whether investing in post-secondary education is going to pay off for them the same way it did for their parents.
00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:11.840
A lot of them are Gen Xers or Boomers.
00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:16.000
And I was wondering like, how different is it that experience for them in reality?
00:11:16.399 --> 00:11:18.240
It's pretty similar to Gen X.
00:11:18.559 --> 00:11:20.559
In some ways, it's better than Gen X, actually.
00:11:20.799 --> 00:11:21.039
How?
00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:23.279
Gen X was Gen X had a terrible time.
00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:25.200
It's nothing as good as what the boomers had.
00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:30.159
It seems like over time, the number of credentials you need to do basic jobs has gone up.
00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:40.080
That happened, like boomers could make a lot of money earlier on in their career, which of course, if you're working until you're 65, let's say, that's a lot of time, that's extra time that you're spending making money instead of paying money.
00:11:40.159 --> 00:11:42.799
But you're saying it was different for Gen X, people shouldn't really compare.
00:11:42.879 --> 00:11:43.200
How come?
00:11:43.679 --> 00:11:52.000
Roughly four times the percentage of people who got degrees 60 years ago when the boomers were there, are getting them today.
00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:55.919
So, you know, back then 10% of the population got a university degree.
00:11:56.000 --> 00:12:02.000
Now it's 40%, and another 30, some percent, some kind of college, and then a little bit of trades on top of that.
00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:05.519
So a lot more people get a university credential than they used to.
00:12:05.679 --> 00:12:10.639
And that's the biggest increase in time spent in school by far.
00:12:10.799 --> 00:12:19.759
Just in this century, the percentage of young people that is 25 to 34 who have a master's degree or above, that's gone from about 7% to 12%.
00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:22.799
So that's some of that credential inflation that you're talking about.
00:12:22.879 --> 00:12:24.879
It's still a fairly small group of people.
00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:28.240
I mean, it's only an extra 5% who've gone to get that second degree.
00:12:28.399 --> 00:12:31.200
I mean, it is going up, but it's not a huge number of people.
00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:36.320
The big increase in time spent in school is just people going from no university to university.
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:52.000
Then having so many more people in the university program then means that if everyone has it, you're not standing out as much, in which case, like it kind of makes it that the job market is so difficult, where if you don't have a degree, you're competing against so many people who do for jobs that probably don't really need it.
00:12:52.639 --> 00:12:54.399
I would say there's at least two issues in there.
00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:58.480
And one is that just people, yes, there is credential inflation going on.
00:12:58.639 --> 00:13:00.000
There is professionalization.
00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:00.799
You're a journalist.
00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:04.080
Journalist 60 years ago, that was not a profession that needed a degree.
00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:07.120
Even 30 years ago, not everybody needed a degree or a credential.
00:13:07.279 --> 00:13:09.519
It's kind of got to the point where it's 100% now.
00:13:09.679 --> 00:13:15.039
Certain types of nursing require extra credentials, certain types of you know, dietitians.
00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:22.000
And so there's a there is a lot of credential adding, and it's gatekeeping by people in the profession who want to keep some people out, right?
00:13:22.159 --> 00:13:23.919
You know, as you say, it's kind of like an arms race.
00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:32.240
As more and more people are chasing a certain number of jobs, they're just going to get education that they don't need this to stand out, if you want.
00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:34.159
That is a bit of a problem.
00:13:34.399 --> 00:13:42.960
The other thing you got to remember though is that the number of jobs that genuinely require higher education, and we can debate a bit about what that means, has gone up quite a bit as well.
00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:53.840
And so the result is that actually like the starting salaries of graduates now versus the starting salaries of graduates 20 years ago, pretty similar.
00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:54.879
Pretty similar.
00:13:55.039 --> 00:13:59.200
It did drop for a while when we had a really big explosion of students.
00:13:59.279 --> 00:14:08.879
So, right after, if you remember the double cohort, we ended grade 13 or whatever they called it, the OACs at the time, and we put two cohorts of of high school graduates through university at the same time.
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:15.840
Graduate salaries went down quite a bit for a number of years, but they've risen again in the last decade or so.
00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:17.679
Not everybody's gone up.
00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:22.720
Humanities, uh, science have not done very well in the last 10, 15 years.
00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:27.360
Math, business, uh, health, they've done pretty well the last 15 years.
00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:28.960
So again, it's it's averages.
00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:34.159
It's certainly true that some fields of study, it's not anything like as good as it was 20 years ago, but in some it's better.
00:14:34.399 --> 00:14:39.600
But if you can get a post-secondary education, should you get it if you can afford to do it?
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:41.759
It always depends on what you're paying in tuition, right?
00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:53.440
In most places, if it's a public university, you're paying$8,000 in tuition, another$1,500 in fees of different kinds, and you're doing it for say four years,$40,000, that's a car.
00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:55.200
It'll save you through your lifetime.
00:14:55.360 --> 00:15:04.159
I think what people get upset about these days, particularly as you know, cost of housing and and things like that go up, is they wish it took less time.
00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:08.159
It's not so much the tuition that matters, it's the number of years you pay it.
00:15:08.399 --> 00:15:12.159
And I I you know tell my clients a lot, I'm like, guys, you got to start.
00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:14.320
We didn't always have four-year degrees.
00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:21.200
Like back in the late 20th century, three-year degrees were still the most common in Ontario.
00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:22.720
They still are in Manitoba.
00:15:22.879 --> 00:15:27.840
People mostly do three years and they get a bachelor's, and if and only if they get the fourth year, then you get an honors.
00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:30.000
And I think that's part of the issue, right?
00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:32.559
People just want to get their careers started faster.
00:15:32.639 --> 00:15:35.919
And people want to get out of the classroom faster.
00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:40.480
And we've done an okay job of that in Canada by bringing things like co-op and internships.
00:15:40.559 --> 00:15:47.039
And people can, it's it's a little easier for people to earn money now than it was 30 years ago while in school.
00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:50.879
But I think that that's that's really the issue, is you know, what's that fourth year for?
00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:54.480
You know, we've been doing a lot of shows about why people are having fewer kids.
00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:59.519
And one thing I hear when I look at some of this information is that people like they don't feel established in their career until later.
00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:05.440
And of course they don't feel established in their career until later because they don't even try to start their career until much later than previous generations.
00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:07.039
It just seems like there's so many knock-on effects.
00:16:07.120 --> 00:16:10.240
But I guess you mentioned housing, and I bet if they solve housing, that would go a long way.
00:16:10.559 --> 00:16:13.360
I hear you have some connection with that in the show.
00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:13.600
Yeah.
00:16:13.840 --> 00:16:20.720
Yeah, like I just think of with the cost, like when you said that there's more opportunities to make money while being in school, yes.
00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:26.480
But then I'm like, well, but I always heard about from, especially the boomers in my life, I've heard about how they used to be able to pay it off in the summer.
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:30.080
They'd go to university, work in the summer, pay it off, easy peasy.
00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:36.240
And now it's like you have to work and you're still not going to be able to pay for your tuition and definitely not with tuition and rent.
00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:38.559
So again, that's that what are you comparing to?
00:16:38.639 --> 00:16:41.120
If you're comparing to 30 years ago, are you comparing to 60 years ago?
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:43.279
60 years ago, absolutely true.
00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:48.879
You know, people would go, you know, work on highways or cut down forests because that's what we were doing in the 60s.
00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:50.240
They could make a lot of money.
00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:54.720
And one of the reasons they could do that is frankly, uh, professors made less, right?
00:16:54.879 --> 00:16:57.759
So the the cost of providing education was lower.
00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:00.960
There were only a quarter as many students, remember?
00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:06.559
So it's easier for government to pay for higher education when only 10% of people go.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:10.079
It's a lot harder to keep up that standard if 40% go.
00:17:10.240 --> 00:17:18.640
And so a lot of the ways that we paid for massification, the way that we gave more people a chance to go to university was by shifting some of the costs onto those students.
00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:22.079
And we said, well, you know, they're still going to make money over their lifetime.
00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:23.519
And yeah, that's absolutely true.
00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:25.119
They will make money after their lifetime.
00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:28.640
But as you put it, it's gonna be, it's gonna take a little longer to get there.
00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:29.680
How do we solve this?
00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:31.039
Like, is that the kind of thing you're saying?
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:35.599
You talk to universities and to say, maybe you don't need a four-year degree, maybe you need a three-year degree.
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:37.440
Like, how do we get out of this problem?
00:17:37.759 --> 00:17:38.880
There's no simple way.
00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:44.960
Uh, because again, that the those gatekeeping functions of degrees will kick in pretty fast, right?
00:17:45.119 --> 00:17:53.759
There are a lot of accreditation agencies out there in health and engineering and other fields where we could just say, actually, you don't, we don't need to do this.
00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:56.079
We don't need to always add things on.
00:17:56.240 --> 00:17:59.200
You know, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, how many years do you need to be a doctor?
00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:00.640
Does it really need to be eight years?
00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:02.720
In other countries, it's not always eight years.
00:18:02.799 --> 00:18:05.200
Uh, a bachelor's degree, does it need to be four years?
00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:06.079
In Europe, it's three.
00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:07.680
Mix think of teachers in Ontario.
00:18:07.759 --> 00:18:09.119
I've had too many teachers, I believe.
00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.079
And so they increased how long it takes, and then they got a shortage.
00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.160
And then I heard they decreased it since then, right?
00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:16.319
That's a that's a perfect example, right?
00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.839
And and there's just that's useful.
00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:19.519
I mean, it's just it's ridiculous.
00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:22.400
People talk about, you know, a degree is not an automatic guarantee.
00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:24.559
And like, that hasn't been true since 1973.
00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:27.440
Like, you got to go back to the oil crisis before that was true.
00:18:27.599 --> 00:18:33.200
Youth unemployment now, or graduate unemployment now, pretty close to where it was in 1976.
00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:36.000
Like, we've been in this situation a long time.
00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:44.799
What's better now that wasn't true 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago, tuition was lower, but we got a lot more student aid than we used to, right?
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:53.039
So the the amount of grants and tax credits and non-repayable aid in the system is now about three times what it was 25 years ago.
00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:58.000
And that's why I always say, like, actually, the worst time to have been a student was about 1994 to 1998.
00:18:58.079 --> 00:19:01.039
Those were the years that were really tuition fees were going up.
00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:08.480
We were cutting grants at the time, we were making more student loans, and they were graduating into the last really bad economy that we've seen, right?
00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:11.680
The 1990s economy was was still much worse than it is today.
00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:14.559
And then it got really good really fast in the early 2000s.
00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:16.400
And so those students, yeah, they did okay.
00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:23.920
And like I say, you know, now we give out more money in various forms of student aid, be it scholarships or grants or tax credits.
00:19:24.079 --> 00:19:28.319
We actually give out more aid to students than we take in in tuition.
00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:30.880
We have what I call net zero tuition.
00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:32.799
Uh well, that was true until the OSAP cuts.
00:19:32.960 --> 00:19:34.240
I'm not sure it's true anymore.
00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:42.400
But yeah, I think uh the last year I checked this, we gave out$13 billion in non-repayable aid and we took in$11 billion in domestic tuition fees.
00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:43.759
We are a generous system.
00:19:43.839 --> 00:19:47.279
We're just kind of opaque uh with the way that we hand out the money.
00:19:47.599 --> 00:19:50.880
Looking forward to having you back once we know more information about what's happened.
00:19:51.200 --> 00:19:54.240
It's wild to me that we can see this government do this.
00:19:54.319 --> 00:20:01.279
Like it just it's really frustrating when you see a government know there's a problem, can see it coming, and they just don't do anything about it.
00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:03.039
And then there's this bunch of collateral.
00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:04.000
Like that's that's really sad.
00:20:04.240 --> 00:20:07.359
Yeah, it's even sadder in that there doesn't appear to be a lot of accountability for it.
00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:08.559
That's what you're here for.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:10.960
Uh, thank you everyone for watching and listening.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:19.039
The producer of this episode is Meredith Martin, who, for full disclosure, our guest happens to be dating, and it's been edited by Canadian Civil, who our guest is not dating.
00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:24.000
And if you feel like your degree went on too long and maybe didn't need to be as long as it was, I'd love to hear about it.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:25.839
Please post your story in the comments.
00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:27.599
And we'll see you next time.
