Province touts OSAP app to make it easier to qualify for post-secondary aid

“We’ve really turned OSAP upside down,” Advanced Education and Skills Development Minister Deb Matthews said Wednesday.

Thestar.com
March 29, 2017
By Robert Benzie

It's the OSAP app.

The provincial government is touting a new Ontario Student Assistance Program calculator designed to make it easier to qualify for financial aid to attend college or university.

“We’ve really turned OSAP upside down,” Advanced Education and Skills Development Minister Deb Matthews said Wednesday at Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School on Bloor Street West.

“Under the new OSAP, over 210,000 students will get free tuition,” Matthews told scores of high school students.

“In the past, OSAP was really complicated,” she said, noting the new online application - at www.ontario.ca/OSAP - simplifies things for students by taking into account household income and other factors.

Matthews said the government is offering young people “a new deal.”

“We’re going to make sure that money doesn’t stop you from going to school,” she said.

Premier Kathleen Wynne stressed that OSAP includes loans and grants so students from all walks of life can qualify for help.

“We need people to go through all of those streams,” Wynne said of college and university attendance.