Ontario pauses OSAP for all private colleges, leaving students scrambling

TORONTO · The Ontario government has halted financial aid payments to all private colleges and universities while an audit investigates potential misuse of the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn announced the pause last week after preliminary findings from a KPMG review of career colleges prompted him to refer the matter to police. Quinn said OSAP payments to private institutions will remain frozen for the duration of the audit, though he is working to arrange low-interest loans from financial institutions for affected students without providing a specific timeline. The sweeping measure impacts a wide range of schools, from performing arts academies to theological colleges, leaving many students unsure how they will cover tuition and living costs.

Students at institutions like Canada's National Ballet School are facing immediate financial strain. Alessia Di Palma, in her final year of a teacher training program there, said she is heartbroken and worried about paying rent despite working two jobs. "My heart sunk when I found out because it's unfair that I've had this funding for four years and then the fifth year it's just gone now because of something that didn't even have anything to do with me," Di Palma said. The ministry's spokesperson, Bianca Giacoboni, said the government lacked assurance from auditors that problems were confined to a few schools, forcing a system-wide pause to protect public funds. She stated officials are developing options for third-party loans to help students during this transition.

John Dalrymple, executive director of the National Ballet School, said about half the students in its post-secondary program depend on OSAP for tuition. He criticized the government's approach as blunt and harmful, particularly because the pause took effect before alternative financing was secured. "The fact that now all of these students who are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, who are at the very beginning of their career, are now left holding the bag to figure out how to finance something that the government had already assured them they qualified for and they were going to receive, I think is unconscionable," Dalrymple said. The school's revenue is not heavily reliant on OSAP, but Dalrymple expressed concern for less resilient institutions.

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McMaster Divinity College is among the theological schools caught by the pause. Registrar Ambrose Thomson said students are distraught and that roughly ten per cent of the college's revenue comes from OSAP-funded tuition. He suggested the government is aware of the severe consequences but is proceeding regardless. "The impression I get is that the government knows full well what the impacts are," Thomson said. "They're not stupid. All I can assume is that at the highest levels where these decisions were made, they're actually willing to allow career colleges and other schools to shut their doors." He connected the move to earlier problems, alleging officials are trying to look active after failing to monitor hundreds of millions in grants.

Financial data reveals the scale of OSAP spending that triggered the audit. According to information obtained by The Canadian Press, a small group of career colleges saw large increases in OSAP usage between 2020 and 2025. The seven schools with the highest usage in the 2024-25 year received $385 million in provincial grants, an amount equal to all OSAP grants given to students at Ontario's public colleges that same year. The sector's umbrella group, Career Colleges Ontario, has flagged potentially suspicious activity at some schools since 2023. This context explains the government's concern but does little to comfort students at unaffected private institutions now facing a funding cliff.

Deanna Hutten, a master's student at McMaster Divinity College, is a single mother who has had to borrow from family and increase her work hours to compensate for the frozen aid. She hopes to work as a hospital chaplain and finds it unjust to be grouped with allegedly problematic career colleges. "They had known about this since 2023 that there were people kind of (allegedly) fudging the system, and now we as private career, not even career colleges, but private institutions, are kind of being swept into that field or that group of people, even though we're not a part of that," Hutten said. Andrew Barnsley, president of the Toronto Film School, described tremendous uncertainty and anxiety among his students and called for either a swift reinstatement of OSAP or a clear resolution timeline.

Barnsley said the pause has disrupted lives, as many students made major commitments expecting stable financial aid. "Many students have rearranged their lives, reduced or left employment, made child-care arrangements and, in some cases, relocated to Toronto in order to pursue their studies," he wrote in a statement. He emphasized students need to know if they can afford essentials like rent and food to continue their programs. The audit by KPMG continues, and the Ontario Provincial Police are now involved, but no end date has been set for the payment pause. Minister Quinn's office has not indicated when the proposed low-interest loans from financial institutions might become available.

With files from The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail and CityNews