Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
The document is called “Reimagine: Affordable, Accessible and Sustainable Post-Secondary Education in Prince Edward Island,” and it contains six recommendations when it comes to financial aid, international student support, tuition and employment.
“The cost of living has gone so far up and the support and services, they really just haven’t kept up,” said Shreesh Agrawal, the UPEI Student Union’s vice-president external, who brought the advocacy document to the legislature along with student union president and CEO Zhaorongyao (George) Jiang.
“The document really takes a few very strong priorities together, finds a way to make them practically applicable to P.E.I. and our political landscape, and put[s] them forward for the government to consider.”
As well as presenting the proposals to MLAs, the student union has been meeting regularly with Minister of Workforce, Advanced Learning and Population Jenn Redmond, said Agrawal.
Annual exercise
Students at the university are asked to fill out a policy priority survey every spring so that the incoming student union executive members know what the student body wants them to tackle.
This year’s first three priorities are related to student financial assistance, calling on the government to:
- Remove “unfair” barriers to financial aid so that parental income is no longer considered or assumed when assessing need.
- Expand the George Coles Bursary to $3,500 a year and loosen eligibility criteria.
- Increase the ceiling for student financial aid support from the weekly maximum of $217 to $300 a week.
Agrawal said the first priority would require a regulatory change. Currently, students looking for financial aid are required to submit documents attesting to their parents’ income, regardless of whether the parents intend to contribute to the cost of their education.
“It is assumed that, provided they’re above a certain income threshold, they are giving me money for post secondary,” he said.
