Second-year law student Justin Lamarche says he is struggling to make ends meet and feels Quebec’s financial aid program is partly to blame.
Even though the Université du Québec à Montréal student doesn’t live with his parents, they are still expected to financially support his education.
Under the Quebec loans and bursaries program, the amount of aid a student receives is calculated by subtracting expected financial contributions from their allowable study and living expenses.
Part of the problem is that calculation often factors in an expected financial contribution from the student’s parents, determined on a sliding scale based on parents’ combined income.
But being the oldest of four children, Lamarche says what his parents can contribute isn’t on par with what the government thinks they can afford.
“So I don’t get much from the program,” he said, which he needs to cover his monthly living expenses. He estimates he spends around $1,500 on rent, food and utilities and then needs around $2,500 for tuition.
Thousands of post-secondary and university students held strikes across Quebec this week to denounce “austerity measures and growing precariousness” among students in the face of the rising cost of living and the provincewide housing crisis.
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Lamarche is part of the Coalition de résistance pour l’unité étudiante syndicale (CRUES), which represents student unions across the province and which organized this week’s protest.
Among other things, the coalition is calling for a reform of Quebec’s student financial aid program — known as the Aide Financière aux études (AFE) — saying its current structure shuts students out of the support they need and leaves them struggling to make ends meet.
CRUES also wants to see the abolition of the parental contribution policy.
Under the current formula, the government provides a list of very specific criteria outlining the situations in which parents aren’t expected to chip in, including if the student is receiving a spousal contribution or if they are a parent themselves.
None of these situations apply to Lamarche.
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The parental contribution rule isn’t the only barrier keeping students from getting the financial aid they need.
To supplement what he receives from the AFE, which was $2,000 last semester, Lamarche is working over 20 hours per week, while going to school.
But he says working is a double-edged sword. The more money you make beyond a certain protected threshold, the more you are expected to contribute to your studies and the less help you get, which becomes a vicious circle.
Lamarche has also had to reduce his course load.
“I cannot afford the extra class,” he said, adding it affects his status as a full-time student and his elligiblity to AFE’s standard loans and bursaries program.
While the AFE runs a separate program for part-time students, it does not award bursaries, which unlike loans, don’t need to be paid back.
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Lamarche’s situation is far from unique.
Rafael Lemay-Fortin, a social studies student at Cégep de Saint-Laurent, is also in a financially precarious situation.
He lives in a studio apartment near the Montreal college. His grandparents pay half his $1,400 rent.
“I’m exceedingly lucky because I have family who can help,” he said. “On the other hand, I can’t feed myself.”
Lemay-Fortin said he has to rely on a food bank most weeks to fill up his fridge.
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Living at home wasn’t an option, because the nearest college isn’t served by public transit and he can’t drive due to a medical condition.
Like Lamarche, he is also considered to be a student with a parental contribution, but says his parents cannot help him financially.
He’s tried to get a job to supplement the $3,500 loan he received through the AFE this semester, but despite the hundreds of resumés he’s sent out, has been unsuccessful.
“And so while that’s really useful to, you know, not starve to death during the session, it’s also a huge amount of stress because I’m going to have to pay that [back] at some point,” he said pointing to an uncertain economic future.
Lemay-Fortin says he’d like to see the government give out more bursaries, rather than loans and the program needs more transparency throughout the application process.
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The Comité consultatif sur l’accessibilité financière aux études (CCAFE) — a public advisory committee on financial accessibility to education — agrees change is needed.
In a report issued in March, the committee highlighted what it described as “the urgent need to modernize” the current system.
In its view, the system “has largely failed to keep pace with changing realities and student pathways — and no longer provides adequate support to those who rely on it.”
The committee issued several recommendations to the previous provincial government, including increasing student living allowances to reflect real living costs, letting students earn more money, updating family income limits and tying aid calculations to inflation and wage growth on an annual basis.
The Coalition Avenir Québec government made a few amendments to the regulations in June, but fell short of the overhaul recommended by the committee.
In a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for the Minister of Higher Education, Elsie Lefebvre, did not directly address the topic of reforming financial aid, but said the minister is sensitive to the concerns raised by students and that meetings are planned in the coming days for student associations that made the request.
