There is a vast, unannounced conspiracy in this country to gut need-based aid in favour of aid which is universal (i.e., non-need-based).

Arguably, it’s been going on since about 1996, when Paul Martin threw a few bucks students’ way by raising the monthly tax credit for students in full-time studies from $80/month to $100/month. While need-based aid expenditures have gone up by a few hundred million since then – mostly due to the introduction of Millennium Scholarships in 1999-2000 – literally billions each year have gone into programs which are either not need-based (i.e., tax credits) or which actively favour the rich over the poor (i.e., Canada Education Savings Grants). The result is a system where something on the order of two-thirds of the entire system’s expenditures goes to non-need-based aid.

The trend has significantly intensified since 2005. That year, three new national programs were introduced: the Canada Learning Bond (CLB), the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) grant for low-income dependent students, and the Millennium Scholarship Foundation’s access bursaries. All three were tightly targeted to low-income students; collectively, they were probably the best-designed pro-poor student aid programs ever designed in Canada. It was the high-water mark for need-based aid.

We’ve been rowing backwards ever since. In 2009, those two grant programs were effectively merged in the new CSLP Canada Student Grant, which deliberately cut the size of grants to the poorest students so as to fund new grants to students further up the income scale. The only “new” national program has been the introduction of a “new” textbooks tax credit which is completely non-need-based.

Across the provinces is a dispiriting list of initiatives. In 2010, Alberta cut its Student Loan Relief Benefit and other need-based grants. Ontario raided targeted, need-based student aid programs to help pay for its ludicrous, as-close-to-universal-as-makes-no-odds 30% tuition rebate plan. In Quebec students spent six months protesting a plan that would have left the poorest third of students better off, just so wealthier kids could go on having the same cushy deal they’ve had for decades. The only bright spot was New Brunswick back-tracking on its decision to eliminate the parental contribution calculations on student loans.

Conservatives, “progressives,” governments, students – all of them can find reasons to gut need-based aid in order to fund non-need based aid or to keep a lid on tuition fees (the ultimate non-need-based subsidy). Call it ideology, call it cynical vote-buying – I won’t argue. But it is demonstrably bad for improving access.

The only people you can genuinely count on to stand up for need-based aid are campus-based student aid administrators, God bless ‘em. And even that may not last forever. More tomorrow.