Education minister gives update on financial assistance program
A review of Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program was announced in January
Education Minister Pamela Gross gave MLAs an update on the Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students program in the legislative assembly on March 18. Post-secondary students have reported difficulties accessing the money they need to register for post-secondary programs, MLA George Hickes said. (Photo by David Venn)
Students are delaying or cancelling their post-education plans because of persistent problems with the Department of Education’s student financial aid program, according to Iqaluit-Tasiluk MLA George Hickes.
He brought the issue up March 18 in the legislative assembly, and asked Education Minister Pamela Gross for an update on an ongoing review of the Financial Aid for Nunavut Students program, or FANS.
“Will the minister commit to supporting an increased role for FANS and student records staff to work with students more directly with their applications so that every student that wants to continue their education can do so, regardless of their personal situation?” he asked.
FANS is an Education Department program that provides financial aid to Nunavummiut who need it to attend post-secondary education institutions. It has come under fire over the past few months, as students have reported they’ve had problems accessing funding, which has led to enrolment problems, according to CBC News.
CBC News reported in January that the Department of Education was reviewing the program.
In response, Gross pointed to the review, as well as an updated program for record keeping, as examples of action her department is taking to fix the problems.
She said that on top of COVID-19 causing delayed payments, a student enrolment form for Arctic College has created confusion with FANS enrolment.
“[That] confusion has been addressed,” Gross said.
Hickes also asked Gross whether the Department of Education would commit to a timeframe to respond to students about their FANS applications. He said students and their parents have told him they have had to wait weeks to get updates on their applications, if they’ve heard back at all.
“Most can’t afford to cover school and travel costs and patiently wait for their FANS application to be processed,” Hickes said.
Gross said the department has developed “standard email responses” to requests like these within two days, but “during peak times” that can be as long as five days.
Gross also said the department would be happy to work with any student who calls or emails about their FANS application.
“I’m always there if people do reach out,” she said.
I’m a Nunavut student currently studying in the south and let me say that the way FANS has been running this year is a complete joke. Right now I have only gotten a quarter of the money I am supposed to and they aren’t answering any phone calls or emails. My first email was sent in FEBRUARY and I am still waiting for a response.
Us students are all thinking the same thing, do your job or get out so someone who will can take your place. Its unbelievable with just weeks left in the semester that we are still dealing with these issues.
In this day and age, this is inexcusable. Are we living in the stone age?
I wish our leaders would just say it like it is and admit that hiring failures have caused this. Why are our leaders so mum about incompetence issues spanning all departments at the GN?
Medical Travel Coordinators who forget to notify people of their appointments, HR staffing officers who “forget” to show up to conduct candidate interviews, and of course, this.
Until the GN pulls up its big boy pants and starts disciplining staff for being lazy and unengaged at work, the downward spiral will continue spinning outta control.
But, how is this possible? According to the Minister you should have received a “standard email response” by now? Did you check your junk mail?
All caused by incompetent staff, old outdated policies, staff not showing up for work and students not getting their transcripts in a timely manner There is an old saying: “Too Many Chiefs, Not enough Indians”. The GN is FAILING our beneficiaries who want to get better education and who wants to be successful. The program has been a failure from the start
I’m not terribly impressed with the Education Minister’s responses to some of these questions, which were frankly underwhelming and even dismissive.
For example, in response to the question about long lag times and poor responsiveness to student inquiries by FANS, Gross said “the department has developed ‘standard email responses’ to requests like these within two days, but “during peak times” that can be as long as five days.”
Is that an aspirational statement, Minister Gross? Because in the real world it appears to be completely false
On a brighter note, I’m impressed with Mr. Hickes who has been asking good questions and, thankfully, keeping our government on its toes.
Keep up the good work, George.
It didn’t take long for the new Minister to put on a dazzling spectacle of bureaucratic inertia
What does a “standard email response” even mean? What is the significance of sending out an email? These students need their funds to pay for living expenses and college fees, not a “standard email response”! Is this your answer to the problem, Pamela… an automatic email?
And of course, it’s “covid” that is causing delays. Was it really covid, or was it a “work from home” scheme that either did not materialize, or that held no one accountable to actually do anything from home?
The incompetence crisis has reached the top.
What a fricken joke
I interpreted the response differently, and if my interpretation is correct, what was done is pretty standard.
If 30% of student requests are about deadlines and where to get forms you would prepare a standard form-letter style response that you can quickly and easily send out. If 25% of requests are where to download forms you would do the same with the links, etc.
You save your limited live-person responses for the unusual/difficult cases.
These kinds of efficiency gains are good.
Yet as a response to the issue at hand; students being paid out a fraction of their funding as we near the end of the semester, relying on the foodbank, etc… this seems inadequate. It is really not enough to say, look we fixed our response time by coming up with a system of standardized email responses. This appears flippant, dismissive and apathetic, despite the possibility that it may really be an improvement in some way.
In other words the response is not proportional to the problem. Surely the Minister can recognize that? Do you recognize that?
I can’t say whether I recognize anything or not – I’m not informed with the details of individual cases, all that I know is what is written here. I can’t comment on the merit of the student complaints.
I will say, that my experience has been that Nunavut students are often very careless about deadlines, fully completing paperwork, and including all of the required information. I can’t help but wonder how big a role that plays?
This certainly raises concern with laidback GN Employees administering Student (financial assistance) program. Not similar with the previous Pro-Actives good days of NWT. This should be administered directly with ABORIGINAL BANK’s.
With Nunavut lowest rate of EDUCATION across Canada possibly approx. 5% that only enroll post-secondary due to lack of accountability, and poor education level that is certainly NOT relevant to COLLEGE or UNIVERSITY level’s (to be taught actual basics ACADEMIC’s)
This certainly raises concern with laidback GN Employees administering Student (financial assistance) program. Not similar with the previous Pro-Actives good days of NWT. This should be administered directly with ABORIGINAL BANK’s.
With Nunavut lowest rate of EDUCATION across Canada possibly approx. 5% this raises concern reflect on enrolment of post-secondary due to lack of accountability, and poor education level that is certainly NOT relevant to COLLEGE or UNIVERSITY level’s (to teach actual of ACADEMIC basic’s)
How many FANS have returned from last year?
How many new FANS applicatiare there this year?
A simple MS Access database should be adequate to keep track of all FANS files.
I am guessing there are no more than 500 active files. Managing them should be relatively easy.
This is presenting the appearance of incompetance. Nunavut may need another Law School. But Nunavut definitely needs a Business Administration School and an Engineering School much, much more.
In NU… “Everyone wants a government job, but nobody actually wants to work for the government.”
When FANS was moved to Arviat, NU as a part of the Nunavut Government devolution, ie spreading the jobs not just in regional centres like Rankin and Cambridge. When college enrollment time came around, all the full time education staff would take annual and have poor casual workers there trying to cover their lazy asses. I guess it is still the same to this day, I feel for the young, aspiring talent that are trying to adhere to this system. Hang in there students, I hope you succeed in your dreams.
I no what the workers at FAN do nothing sit around in the hall way doing nothing playing frinke all day and other just saying home doing nothing like there saying working for home?
In other words… people with no postsecondary education in charge of people’s postsecondary education.
How correct you are, the present Minister I believe was an employee at the Cambridge Bay visitors’ and museum center. Is she qualified to head the Education Dept. of GN?
To be fair she has a BA from Carleton.
The standard cliche responses written by her staff are reminiscent of sports guys being interviewed “just proud to be part of the team, we win as a team and lose as a team” The answers to questions from other MLA’s and Reporters has been rather embarrassing to watch.
Does she have any personal input on the situation? Does she have any empathy for students who are losing a year of their career because the incompetent staff who are delaying payments? Maybe walk down the aisle of the gift card section for ideas “we are sorry for your loss”. Hey there’s a start.
Here’s a novel idea, set the Ministers full salary to the Department of Educations FANS payment schedule. I bet it would be resolved in record time.
As a student who has been supported by FANS for many years (one previous degree and a current degree), I believe it’s important to balance this discussion with grace and gratitude. The government as a whole is struggling to fill positions, and this likely puts a disproportionate burden on the employees who currently are serving serving students from these FANS offices. This is not to diminish the struggles that many students face when they do not receive services in a timely manner, I personally know how difficult it is to study when going through financial difficulties. However, in my experience, many of the individuals in the FANS offices work hard to process and keep track of applications, and to disburse the funds in a timely manner. Obviously there is room for improvement in the management of information and the execution of various policies, but I think it’s important to also recognize that we are fortunate to have these grants and these services. I am personally very grateful to be in a position where I do not have steep student loans, where many of my peers do not have the same supports available to them. I imagine it is challenging to create and test effective solutions from within an existing service delivery system. A lot of meaningful feedback came from consultations on the Education Act, perhaps this department can benefit from focussed, cost-effective consultations with Nunavut postsecondary stakeholders to identify meaningful and feasible solutions to important issues being raised by community members and students.
And this, folks, is one of the most balanced, fair, intelligent and articulate comments ever posted as a response to a NN article. Thank you most sincerely.
I smell a whole lotta rear end kissing with your comment! The Minister is in way over her head, she should have sat as Counselor for several more years before running for Mayor, and she was a subpar Mayor at that!
Being a parent of a student that depended on Fans to continue her education. The Minister in my opinion has misled the public in addressing these concerns from day one as Minister of Education. Not believing in the integrity of the students that voiced concerns and instead blaming the students for not completing the proper paper work. The Minister stood up for the staff rather than just saying she would look into the situation and really listen to the students who were effected.
The Minister needs to be at the airport in Ottawa when a student is attempting to check in using the booking reference she has to hear from the agent that I am sorry you don’t have a booking, the ticket was booked but not paid for. Then to hear you will have to pay for the ticket yourself. This being said to a student who don’t have the means and nor do the parents to pay for the ticket up front.
The Minister stay firm on blaming the students for the problems with the program. In my opinion she needs to sincerely apologize to the fans students effected.
It is also my opinion that if there was a process for a voter to call for a vote of non-confidence vote this is certainly a good case for it.
The Minister needs to learn to either get the correct information or not speak to the issue. Very disappointed in this Minister, certainly in way over her head.
On today’s episode of “You might have a privileged sense of entitlement”
1. If you expect the taxpayer to pay for your out-of-territory travel.
2. You expect a government funtionary to do your travel bookings and pay for them.
If you said yes to either of the above, collect your ‘I didn’t check my unreflected upon privilege’ button on your way out.
That is literally what FANS does though! They guarantee the travel of accepted students to the nearest southern ‘hub’ city. Of course, someone should be angry if they show up at the airport, probably having had moved out of their apartment or residence, just to learn that they need to pony up thousands of dollars to get home.
Furthermore, you should check your own privilege if you think the average student has that money let alone the money to fly across the country to attend a post-secondary program. You’re out to lunch trying to lecture somone else.
I am in now way lecturing, I am observing the privilege of Nunavut students and the generosity of FANS compared to Canada Student Loans and those of some other poor provinces.
I was an out-of-province student ( studied in Alberta, from Ch’town at the time). The costs of travel home were a huge burden, and I had Christmas holidays of not returning home because it was too costly. I was in no way special and this situation is not not unusual.
This is the expected situation of the ‘average’ student in this country. As is working a part-time job during the school year and full-time in the summer.
FANS is incredibly generous, but our students are so entitled that they don’t recognize this.
To be fair, if the FANS travel office is as bad as some of the medical travel offices, yes that would be annoying.
Wondering & curious…
How much FANS recipients repay the university fee to the financial department when they’re done university/college….
I meet students in southern Canada, some international, hold two or more part time jobs to help with rent, books, food along with attending school.
Guaranteed…they will have to repay every nickel borrowed.
Do students from Nunavut experience this?
Just asking.
Good question – the student loan default rate is published in most provinces. Anyone have any ideas where to get those stats for Nunavut?
Based on what people say (I know, I know) about the amount of debt that is written off at nac by defaulting students, I would guess that it is high.
There are many NS dropouts that have are stuck with student loans because they didn’t graduate, maybe 4000 or 5000$, who can’t be bothered to pay it back.
I wonder if these debts ever go to collections. Still it is beyond me how someone who drops out of NS, gets a GN job, buys all the fancy toys in the world, yet can’t be bothered to repay their student loans.
Budgeting courses are needed in the north to help folks stretch their dollars further, especially with the high cost of living.
This is sooo not accurate :
“Gross said the department has developed “standard email responses” to requests like these within two days, but “during peak times” that can be as long as five days.”
We had sent them our application as well as a follow up email and never heard from them ! Dont ever bother calling cause you will not get anyone to pick up .
When will the embarrassment stop? I’m so glad to be leaving this territory. PJ, Adam and Pamela please don’t fully destroy this place until after mid-June
If the premier just gets rid of the minister of education and replaces her with someone experienced, he as well as the cabinet have the potential to make great changes for Nunavummiut. Take her with you when you leave!