OASFAA Systems Committee requesting feedback for meeting with MCURES
Greetings, OASFAA Friends!
The Ministry’s Business Unit has reached out to the OASFAA Systems Committee to discuss development priorities for the coming year. The committee has identified three key issues for discussion:
1. Improvements to the newly introduced reinstatement upload process (introduced in a December 13, 2024 FAO portal posting)
2. Efficiency and quality of life improvements in the PTCSL administrative system
3. Any critical system issues
Systems has reviewed the outstanding list of issues and has surfaced key points for discussion, summarized below.
Did we miss something? We invite the membership to raise any issues not covered – you can simply respond to this forum post! If you’d prefer to submit your feedback privately, you can email me at anikpowell@ocadu.ca. Please provide a brief description of the issue, an indication of the impact to workload or to students, and a suggested priority level. We’ll be consolidating feedback after end of day on Monday October 27th, in advance of our next meeting with the Business Unit on October 30th.
Thanks for your help!
OASFAA Systems
Item 1: RST upload enhancements
MCURES has some thoughts/concepts they’d like to share, so we aren’t sure whether these items will remain relevant – but these are the pain points identified with the program as surfaced by the committee:
Top priority: Income carrying over from the base application. As student income very often changes during a reinstatement study period, this requires a lot of manual work to correct RSTs after upload, and can especially be an issue for schools with a lot of automatic scholarships during the fall/winter. There is pressure to do the upload and then fix the income that same day, to ensure the student isn’t getting an assessment and then an immediate notice of reassessment, just because this drives traffic and can cause confusion. Can we get a few fields to upload RST period income/awards?
Secondary priority: unable to upload when the file has an RST already in place. This comes up with fall withdrawals, but also with co-op students who alternate in class-work term-in class for fall/winter/spring. Can we get the ability to upload an RST for a file that already has an RST?
No checks on overlapping dates – an RST file can be uploaded with overlapping study periods without triggering an error. The problem is only identified if the FAO checks the file or if the students sees the overlapping study period message on their portal. Can the upload log an error if an RST is uploaded with overlapping study dates?
One institution has identified that final spring/summer fees are not determined until close to the spring/summer study period start. Could the system allow for upload study periods using cost codes in “Approved for estimate” status?
We don’t think we’ll get this but we wanted to ask anyways: some students apply with a new base application, and some schools conventionally direct students to apply for a new base application. Dream ask: Any possibility that we could get the ability to either a) flip a second BAS app to an RST on the back end? Or b) have the system code a new app as RST if it is at the same school as a prior FT app within the same academic year? Or c) have the student be able to reopen an existing app to indicate they would like to extend/reinstate that application on the FAO portal?
Item 2: PTCSL Administrative EnhancementsMany institutions have expressed that PTCSL requires more manual work to administer than the FT program. Some significant changes have been proposed (eg. adopting full time cost codes for PT) but operational differences between FAOs has made it difficult for the committee to land on solutions that would work for all institutions. A few administrative issues do seem universal, and keep coming up. These include:
Denied supporting documents on application does not show the student what is required – PT app shows nothing is pending so students do not know what to provide as information is removed from required documents page. Can the required documents list be shown again after a document has been denied?
General issues when asking students about their PT borrowing history - whether they have previously received PT, whether they have successfully completed all courses funded PT, and to report their borrowing total with PT. Students don’t always get these answers correct, and the questions can cause needless expense for the student and delay on the app.
Regarding previous PT: Can the system recognize if a student previously received PT and identify when a transcript is needed? Also, students often pay for transcripts when continuing PT at a single institution. Can the system suppress the transcript requirement when prior PT was at the same institution?
Regarding the borrowing total: As students often don’t know their total, this doesn’t add value or demonstrate awareness that they’re approaching their limit. Can this be changed to a simple acknowledgement and have the system stop the app if the NSLSC indicates that the student’s borrowing has hit the limit? Note from executive: the $10,000 limit is no longer adequate.
Regarding successful completion of previous PT funded courses: Can a code to be placed on a student’s profile when they don’t pass all PT courses and have to self-fund? Rather than asking the student the q’s (and them getting them wrong more than 100% of the time), the code would bring up the supdoc requirement (to show proof of passing the self-funded term) and it would also alleviate the FAO’s requirement to check previous PT history and review transcripts unnecessarily. Could we create a work queue for academic progress with an upload function? This may be especially important when the student moves to a new institution – when reviewing a transcript, there is no indication which courses were funded through PT. Note that this may cause timing issues for consecutively funded PT terms when marks aren’t available immediately after SPE.
The Explanation of Financial Situation doesn’t appear to add value. The letter pops up as a requirement whenever a student enters $0 in income earned in the previous tax year. If they put $1 of income in the previous year it is not required. $1 in income makes next to no difference to how they’re covering their living costs. Can this be changed to a simple acknowledgement on the application where the student indicates that they understand living expenses will not be covered through part-time OSAP?
Student has part time OSAP funding released, and PD is subsequently added to the profile with DVF. When the file is released, the part time funding goes into overpayment and CSGD can't be released because of the overpayment. Can PT follow same process as FT - release the balance and convert funding on the back end? Note that this is partially addressed in the PT Manual 2025-2026 - FAOs are required to contact OSAPFAO.Inquiry to have MCURES manually release funding and/or release additional funding to allow institution to TRM overpayment.
Item 3: Any critical systems issues
1. Mail preferences:
FAOs are concerned that mail disruptions may prevent students from receiving essential communications regarding their OSAP. Request to MCU: Change the notification options for OSAP, so students may select one of the following:
Email notification only OR
Mailed notification and Email notification
Ie: students can’t opt out of getting email notice, but they can opt IN to getting mailed notification as well
2. Three term assessments/non standard study periods:
Not an urgent issue but one we’d like to keep on the radar: FAOs wish to restate the difficulty in managing programs with nonstandard study periods, or three term academic years.
Nonstandard study periods can result in serious issues regarding the timing for confirmation and release of second term funds. Three term study periods don’t work for a single application as they a) don’t align with payment deadlines and term starts, b) can result in unwanted progress/overpayment consequences if a student takes a leave of absence or completes early. This requires institutions to either process applications one term at a time, or to process a two term base app and then reinstate for term 3. This is a lot of extra work for most grad students and 3 term programs. We understand that this is not a small ask, but wonder if some enhancements can be made without overhauling the entire system. Eg: could optional term dates be added to the cost code structure to be picked up only when needed?
If you got this far, thanks for reading! Have a great day!