As many private college students in Ontario put their training on hold due to a freeze in student financial aid, there are concerns a dwindling number of graduates will make it difficult to recruit people for job vacancies in critical health-care sectors.
Career colleges offer courses and certificates in a wide variety of career pathways, in health care, technology, law, and justice and business.
Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn paused Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) payments at all private post-secondary institutions earlier this month, saying preliminary findings of a KPMG audit turned up significant concerns.
As a result, many students say, they are left hanging and unable to pay living expenses.
Ashley Cole wrote to CBC, saying she is halfway through her training as a paramedic at CTS Canadian Career College in North Bay.
She said she and her 116 fellow students have already received the first half of their funding, but are in limbo for the second half. Some have moved a significant distance to take the course.
“Some of us have left jobs, prioritized our education over time with our families and made multiple sacrifices to further our education to give back to our community,” she wrote.
Other students are also expressing frustration.
A Sudbury mother of four studying to become a paralegal, Moriah Ferron, said she had to borrow to get her hydro turned back on.
In Sault Ste. Marie, Aaron Madgett, laid off from Algoma Steel last March, had just begun the paramedic program, but without OSAP funding, Madgett is now turning to the food bank to help support his family.
Initially, the ministry said its concerns involved six institutions, but a spokesperson elaborated in a statement to CBC News this week.
Nolan Quinn, Ontario minister of colleges, universities, research excellence and security, paused OSAP payments at all private post-secondary institutions earlier this month. (Ontario PC Party)
“In recent weeks, we’ve seen evidence of systemic issues,” wrote Bianca Giacoboni. “At this time, we do not have assurances from the audit team that the issues are not more widespread, leaving us with no choice but to pause OSAP payments to all private institutions to protect taxpayer dollars and hold bad actors accountable.”
It’s not clear when the funding will flow to students again.
The province says it’s working to develop options for low-interest, third-party loans facilitated by financial institutions to help students, but it won’t have that in place until at least next year.
Melina Luther in Wawa is about to graduate from the paramedic program at the Sault campus of CTS, and her husband had just started a program to allow him to open a counselling business.
She said they want to stay in the north, but aren’t sure of their next steps.
“We’re not old by any means, but we’re also not spring chickens anymore,” she said. “We’re very much trying to create a foundation for our family and finances.”
Student dropouts or delays in education due to the OSAP funding freeze could lead to more vacancies for personal support workers (PSWs) and paramedics, according to those in these fields, and eventually people going without critical services.
Miranda Romanovicz, executive director of the Ontario Personal Support Workers Association, said private career colleges are the biggest educators of PSWs, graduating 86 per cent of them.
“I don’t see how we’re going to meet the need of our most vulnerable in this province if we’re not graduating them from the largest graduator of PSWs. It makes absolutely no sense,” she said.
Miranda Romanovicz, executive director of the Ontario Personal Support Workers Association, says private colleges are important in graduating students aiming for careers in health care. (Submitted/Miranda Romanovicz)
“We were completely confused,” said Romanovicz. “There is a huge disconnect between this decision and the reality of the front-line shortage that we are already seeing across Ontario and health care.”
She added the flexibility that private colleges offer students is a big reason students choose them.
“They typically offer a bit of a shorter course, about six to seven months. They work around people’s schedules. A lot of them do hybrid,” she said, referring to a combination of online courses and classroom lessons.
“They also have a lot more starting dates than community colleges. Community colleges are typically September start, January start, whereas career colleges do September, October, November. They can do as many as they absolutely want to, and that is why they are the largest educator of personal support workers.”
On the issue of staff shortages, Romanovicz said the province has been moving forward with opening long-term care homes, creating even more of a demand for PSWs while constraining private colleges from training them.
Even if the province figures out funding for students by early next year, she’s not sure the sector can catch up.
“I’m on the fence about that one, in all honesty, because like I said, the career colleges graduate so many personal support workers,” she said. “I think we’re still going to see a dent in the amount graduating. I hope they do figure it out and we’re happy to work with the government on any level and try to rectify this issue.”
The Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care has not yet responded to an email from CBC News.
The Ontario Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security said it has been providing grants to educate PSWs through the Learn and Earn Program to public community colleges, such as Collège Boréal, but did not mention private colleges.
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Don Symons is a paramedic and president of OPSEU local 679 for an area covering 45,000 square kilometres, including Manitoulin Island, part of the north shore and north to Foleyet.
Symons said there are serious paramedic staffing issues that are eroding service in the vast region.
With 90 full-time paramedics and 42 part time, they are below the number they had seven years ago.
Even with that workforce, Symons said, shifts are going unfilled.
He estimated that dozens of paramedics have left the organization in that time, citing a lack of housing in rural northeastern Ontario and higher wages in southern Ontario.
He said he fears the crunch is becoming a crisis if fewer paramedics graduate from private colleges due to the OSAP funding freeze.
Symons noted that a significant number of paramedic training programs are offered at schools across Thunder Bay, Timmins, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie and North Bay, with hundreds of students enrolled, but many don’t complete their courses.
“There were some estimates that there were around 600 students enrolled in those programs, but only 135 of them would actually graduate from those courses.”
The intensity of the training and the stress of the job sometimes make students think twice about choosing paramedicine as a career, he said.
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“Any pause or any decrease in the number of available, trained and certified paramedics has the potential to add to an already strained staffing crisis,” said Symons.
“The overwhelmingly majority of them are in this profession to help people at the time when they need it the most, and any obstacles that get in the way of that is stressful for the front-line paramedics.”
