By Maya Zaid
Students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) say they are frustrated by the delay in receiving their Ontario Student Assistance Plan (OSAP) payments for the winter 2023 semester.
The Jan. 27 tuition fee deadline has passed, yet students continue to experience funding delays due to a “database system error,” TMU president Mohamed Lachemi told The Eyeopener.
In order to receive funding from OSAP, students must have their enrolment confirmed by TMU’s Student Financial Assistance Department, according to its website.
Until confirmation of a sufficient course load is received by OSAP, students cannot receive their grants.
The error came from an outside computer information systems vendor, Oracle, which helps with TMU’s enrolment data. It led to the enrolment confirmation process being delayed until after the winter break, said Lachemi. This resulted in as many as 20,000 students receiving late payments and several of those students missing their tuition fee deadlines for the winter semester, said Lachemi.
“OSAP being delayed is one more hurdle for students to find success”
In an emailed statement to The Eye, the Student Financial Assistance department, which is run out of the student ServiceHub at TMU, said it is working to confirm enrolments “as quickly as possible” so that funding can be disbursed. It said that it is rare for its processing times to take longer than three to six weeks.
It also said that “by submitting an application on time, students can help speed up the distribution of their funding.”
Fifth-year TMU student Ellie Ferrer applied for OSAP for the 2022-23 academic year in June. She was quoted in August to be receiving her winter semester funding by Jan. 5. She didn’t receive it until Jan. 23.
The Office of The Vice-Provost, Students told The Eye that its records show that no students have missed the winter 2023 tuition payment deadline.
“I don’t work enough hours to make enough money to live”
However, second-year English and history student Abdullah Zaidi said he didn’t meet the Jan. 27 deadline due to the delay.
The school did not get back to The Eye in time to clarify if this discrepancy was due to an unofficially extended payment deadline.
While Zaidi received an email in late January letting him know his financial aid would be delayed another few weeks, Ferrer had no idea there were any issues with her funding at the time.
“For a whole week, I thought [OSAP] already paid TMU,” said Ferrer. “Then I ended up getting an email saying [I] still have outstanding fees.”
Lachemi told The Eye that the school “has a flexible approach” to ensure that students who are dealing with funding delays don’t get penalized for missing winter semester fee deadlines.
But for some students, the government aid program is used for more than just paying their tuition.
Ferrer, who is a full-time hospitality and tourism student, also has a part-time job to make ends meet. She said she does not earn enough to cover all of her day-to-day expenses.
“The extra money that I get from OSAP, I use that to pay for my course packs or textbooks,” she said.
Ferrer said if her funding had arrived a bit later, she would have had to dip into her savings or ask her parents to pay for half of her tuition.
“I don’t work enough hours to make enough money to live. The fact that it was just getting pushed back and not knowing when you would get your money was really worrisome,” she said.
Funding delays mean more stress for students amid already tense monetary situations in Canada, said Colleen Amato, a counsellor at TMU’s Centre of Student Development and Counselling.
“I think more and more people are being forced against the wall financially,” she said.
Without funding, students can sometimes be forced to take semesters off or lighten their course load and work more to make ends meet, said Amato.
“OSAP being delayed is one more hurdle for students to find success, to find their grit and to ask for help,” she said.
Alongside delays in their funding, students also said they had trouble receiving help from the ServiceHub at TMU, which hosts several supports for school-based service issues, including financial assistance.
Ferrer said she called the ServiceHub several times after she found out her funding was delayed.
“I was just so frustrated and angry because I kept calling ServiceHub. And all they would tell me was, ‘Just keep waiting. Just keep waiting,’” she said.
Finally, Ferrer decided to go visit the Hub in person. Even then, she was told that there was no one qualified to assist her on OSAP matters on Wednesdays or Fridays.
“They just don’t even acknowledge you,” she said. “I just wished that there was some sort of update.”
She said she originally thought she had made a mistake on her application because there was no correspondence from the school over the delays, despite her multiple attempts to seek more information from them.
“There was no sympathy, there was no warning, there was no email. So, I just thought maybe there was something wrong on my end,” she said.
ServiceHub’s Student Financial Assistance told The Eye that it understands that the wait time can feel long for students with financial need and that it is working “urgently to address any delays, and we expect the process to be smoother for all students as we continue to test and refine the system.”
“More and more people are being forced against the wall financially”
The Eye also reached out the ServiceHub for comment regarding student complaints about its service. However, we did not hear back in time for publication.
Third-year nursing student Tijana Sumic was also affected by the OSAP delays. Luckily, she was able to receive her funding before the tuition fee deadline on Jan. 23, she said. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t stressed out during the wait, she said.
Sumic said TMU could have offered more support and open communication to students, but did not care to do so.
“There was no sympathy, there was no warning, there was no email”
“The school ultimately wants to get paid. They don’t care how they get paid. They just want the full tuition and OSAP is that mediator between us and the school.”
Lachemi told The Eye that the school “understands the frustration from students” over the wait but the university is working to speed up the process. He said the university has processed “most of the paperwork” by now.
Zaidi also said TMU should have taken a different approach to the delay.
“There should be a little bit more accountability, responsibility and a bit of friendliness in terms of being able to contact and resolve these discrepancies and funding,” he said.
Zaidi also said despite these concerns, the process of receiving OSAP has always been too tedious and complicated.
In order for post-secondary students in Ontario to acquire the funding, they must submit the required financial documents at least 40 to 60 days before their study period begins, according to the TMU financial assistance website.
Students can track their funding through the National Student Loans Service Centre (NSLSC), which is in charge of disbursement and collection of student loans. If there are issues, students are advised to contact the financial aid office at their school, as stated on the NSLC website
Students are also able to contact OSAP directly if they haven’t received funding 10 days after the NSLSC has confirmed their enrolment. But Zaidi said the process to contact OSAP and the registrar and wait for a call back is even more complicated.
“It’s more worthwhile for me to just save the four to six hours of my life on the phone and just take the 60-70 dollars, or whatever the late fee will be,” he said.
Zaidi said the school needs to “embrace the 21st century” model of communication around these matters.
“If I could just get a text saying, ‘Hey your funding is on the way’ the same way that I can get a text from my bank saying a transfer went through, it would feel like I’m in the loop more than it feels like I am now,” said Zaidi.
Lachemi told The Eye the school is aware of students experiencing a delay.
He said the Communication and Computing Services (CCS) department “is working with the database vendor to better understand how this issue arose and how it could be prevented in the future.”
He said he expects the next course enrolment to be smooth for all students as the university’s Communication and Computing Services (CCS) Department continues to refine the database and system.
“Technology’s always good, until it doesn’t work properly,” said Lachemi.
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