My student loan appeal has gone through and they increased my allotment by $623: not quite the expansion for which I was hoping. Essentially, the reason for this is that they have pre-set formulas for allotting loan amounts that adapt poorly to the nature of an Oxford education. They are based on the cost of living in Canada, and they do not reflect understanding of how Oxford terms work. They certainly do not reflect the extreme cost differentials between attending graduate school in Canada and doing so in a place like this.
A word of warning to future applicants: do not expect even half as much student loan funding in your second year as in your first; this, they ought to make clear before you go. In my case, seems as though some kind of additional fundraising is going to be required, if I am to make it through Trinity term and my exams.
See also: prior ravings about school related government bureaucracy.
This sounds utterly, utterly insane. I would be interested in hearing more of the details about it.
This, and many other decisions relating to higher education, imply to me that almost all provinces and the federal government in Canada are opposed to people pursuing higher education. After all, why would we need an educated workforce, there are plenty of trees and fish aren’t there? Or, er, actually maybe there aren’t. Morons.
Like UBC, the government believes that fairness means mathematical formulas, in this instance.
If you give early admission to everyone with a 92% average in high school early admission, you are being “fair” according to UBC. Of course, this doesn’t consider the broader issues of their lives. It just provides the illusion of objectivity.
So too, I suspect, the formulas that underlie the student loan system.