Cailey Davidson says she felt “really discouraged and a little blindsided” when she learned about the province’s upcoming cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP).

The 26-year-old Wilfrid Laurier University student lives with fibromyalgia, which makes balancing school and work challenging. She says she was relying on OSAP to help her stay focused on her studies.

“I’ve been using grants for tuition and loans for living expenses. But with the change, I’ll have to rearrange how I’m handling my life,” she told CBC News.

Starting this fall, grants will make up only 25 per cent of total financial aid, while loans will rise to 75 per cent.

This marks a major shift from the previous system, where students received 85 per cent of their aid as grants and just 15 per cent as loans.

Concern about rising debt

Davidson and other students say the changes to OSAP will increase debt and make education more expensive. She worries she may have to put her studies on hold.

“I’ve considered taking a year off to return to the workforce in food service, just so the burden after graduating is lessened,” she said.

Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research, Excellence and Security Nolan Quinn says the province’s decision to change how OSAP is distributed came after of broader shifts in post-secondary funding, including a federal decision to remove grant eligibility for students at private career colleges and significant declines in international student enrolment.

“It was putting billions of dollars of pressure on the provincial portion of OSAP,” he said. “We wanted to ensure that OSAP is sustainable, not just for today’s students, but for the students behind them.”

But while Davidson grapples with these changes mid-degree, they loom even larger for students who haven’t set foot on campus yet.

Mabel Winter, a Grade 12 student at Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph, is planning to study Environmental Resource Management at the University of Waterloo. She worries about how her family will manage expenses, as her sister is also going into post-secondary in the coming years.

“We were planning on having some grants obviously to cover the both of our schools,” Winter said. “All of us are going to be paying back debt.”

Despite concerns about increased debt, Quinn says OSAP remains a critical support for students.

“OSAP will still continue to be there for the students that need it,” he said.

While he admits the shift toward loans means students will have “a modest amount of debt afterwards,” the minister framed it as an investment in their future careers.

“They’re looking at, the future labour market needs. And to me, it’s money well spent on the student side,” he said.

Quinn adds that the benefits of post secondary education outweighs financial pressures.

“It’s very evident that students, whether it’s a college degree or university degree, their career earnings are significantly higher,” he said.

‘There is nothing that we can do’

Winter says the change has left many students at her school worried about their futures.

“Everybody’s kind of just really stressed out because I guess there is nothing that we can do,” she said.

While the reaction was strong at Winter’s school, Jazzmin Gabriel, a 21-year-old student in Conestoga College’s journalism program, says the reaction at the college is not as passionate.

“There’s a lot of petitions going around, but I know that it’s definitely not being talked about as much as I hoped,” she said.

At Conestoga College, the effect of the cuts is even more stark, as OSAP will no longer offer grants to students at private career colleges. Gabriel took aim at Ontario Premier Doug Ford, saying the cut is short-sighted.

“[Ford] doesn’t understand the impact of his actions,” she said. “I think it’s really disappointing that in a time when wages are already lower, we’re expected to now pay back even more of the money.”

Gabriel, who lives in a single-income household, will have to rely on scholarships to continue her education.

She says the cuts will only push more students away from colleges.

“Changing it so drastically is just really going to be devastating,” she said. “I know friends who aren’t even wanting to apply to college because of the cost.”