The Post-Secondary Student Support Program

The purpose of this document is to examine the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)'s Post-Secondary Student Support Program (PSSSP) and analyse the advantages and disadvantages of both the existing system of program delivery and a trio of alternative delivery mechanisms. It does not issue any recommendation with respect to a preferred model of program delivery; rather, the intention is to lay out the challenges involved with each mechanism in a consistent and fair manner, and allow readers to draw their own conclusions with respect to the feasibility and desirability of each option. Of course, policy does not exist in a vacuum. For this reason, the first two-thirds of the document deal with the context in which the PSSSP exists. Part I provides a brief overview of recent research findings on the subject of access to Post-Secondary Education (PSE) among Aboriginal Canadians and in particular examines the numerous barriers to increased PSE participation for Aboriginal Canadians, and tries to place in context the degree to which financial barriers (as opposed to attitudinal, aspirational or academic ones) act as a brake on the closing of the gap in participation rates between Aboriginal an non-Aboriginal Canadians. Part II looks at the PSSSP itself, and in particular some of the more persistent criticisms of the program, and identifies some of the key issues that need to be dealt with in future. Only once these issues are examined does the paper move, in Part III, to examine alternative delivery mechanisms.