Daily Bulletin

Province makes a proposal on loans

Johnson said he was looking for lenders "to join the province" in introducing an income-contingent-repayable loan system "that will keep postsecondary education accessible".

Said the minister:"A college or university education often leads to a highly skilled, rewarding career, and we must make sure that all qualified students have the opportunity to enjoy these benefits. We are asking lenders to make it easier for students to afford a postsecondary education by making income- contingent repayment options available to students who ask for them, starting no later than September 1998."

Johnson also urged the federal government to introduce other income-contingent measures in its student loan program. Federal finance minister Paul Martin is due to bring down his budget tomorrow.

The minister invited banks to submit proposals that would give students these options when they repay their loans:

• Students could reduce their monthly payments by extending their repayment period to 15 years.
• Students whose earnings are low after graduation could make reduced payments initially and pay more in later years when their incomes are higher.
• Students with very low incomes could receive assistance from the government to meet their interest payments for up to 18 months.
• Students could make payments of interest only, with no payment towards principal, for an additional 12 months.

The ministry said it was issuing a Request for Proposals to lenders who currently issue Ontario student loans. The RFP asks lenders to provide these new options and to propose other options that will make it easier for students to repay their loans. Responses are due by March 25.

Don't hold your breath, was the immediate response from bank executives. "As I look at this news release, it doesn't address the debt levels," said Sandy Ferguson, a vice-president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. He said banks have been urging the government to find a way to reduce student debt, and they don't think the plan announced last week will do that. "If we agreed to it, then we'd be part of a process that would force students to take on more debt."

Said another bank official: "Increasing the number of years that you can carry a loan only increases the cost of borrowing."

Banks also aren't keen on a system that would shift the risk for unpaid loans from the government to the lending institutions. The default rate on student loans in Ontario is now about 18 per cent for university graduates, 28 per cent for students from community colleges, and even higher for students from for-profit trade schools.

About 218,000 students received money from OSAP in 1996-97. Approximately 42 per cent of full-time Ontario university students and 55 per cent of college students received assistance, the government says. "In 1998-99, the Ontario Government will spend an estimated $535 million on student support, up $134 million (33%) from 1995-96, and up $31 million from 1997-98."

Watcat adds its last book

Data from Watcat are being "extracted to tape, transferred to the new database server in IST and converted to the Voyager format", says a memo from Charles Woods of the library's systems department. Voyager is the software behind Trellis.

"On Friday evening," he said last week, "the last major updates to the bibliographic and holdings data of the UW GEAC system will be run. After completion these databases will be frozen: no bibliographic or holdings records will be added, changed or deleted on WATCAT, the Bibliographic Processing System (BPS) or the Circulation system for the remainder of the implementation project.

"On Saturday morning the lengthy process of writing the WATCAT database to tape begins. This should be completed by Wednesday, February 25. On the 25th the data will be transferred into the IST database server."

Then this Friday, "Endeavor will combine the databases from Guelph, Laurier and Waterloo and begin the process of converting the bibliographic and holdings data into the Voyager format. The new Voyager database of bibliographic and holdings records should be available for evaluation by TUG cataloguing staff by March 9. Actual cataloguing of new titles on the Trellis system will begin in the week of March 16." No new items or changes to the catalogue will be available for public use from now until the end of April.

Web page helps with credit transfer

The program, called STEP for Student Equivalency Program, "provides students with a wonderful resource to access information on-line about all Ontario universities", said Rob Prichard, chair of the Council of Ontario Universities. "Students need fast, reliable information about course offerings and course equivalencies they will receive in moving from one institution to another."

An estimated 17,000 students apply to transfer from one Ontario university to another each year. And that's not counting the 60,000 new applicants for university study who can also make use of STEP.

"There was a tremendous amount of hard work that went into STEP," said Bonnie Patterson, president of COU. "The graphic interactive system is user-friendly and the first of its kind in North America." Among the key people in developing it was Karen LeDrew, a UW associate registrar who was seconded to the credit transfer project for about a year.

STEP was developed with $930,000 in Ontario government money and another $600,000 in money, time and services from the universities. It can be found on the Web at http://step.ouac.on.ca. (But it needs a Java-enabled browser, which leaves me out, so I can't report on how it works.)

Phone book will list userids

Not everybody knows about uwuserids, I gather, but everybody has one -- a string of up to eight characters that follows you as long as you're part of the university. Among other features, it can be used as an e-mail address no matter what computer you currently use. If your uwuserid is, say, "jdowney", then e-mail to "jdowney@uwaterloo.ca" should follow you to whatever your current e-mail system is. The UWdir directory lets people look up your uwuserid as well as your current e-mail address on your preferred local system.

The white pages of the new phone book -- which went to the print shop at the end of last week -- will list uwuserids along with phone numbers, office locations and departments, says Bruce Uttley of information systems and technology.

A preview of the white pages is available on the Web just now -- but it's only a preview, and will disappear when the printed directory is ready. It's also a mighty large file, some 220K, which not everybody's web browser can handle, Uttley warns. The departmental directory listings for the new phone book are also on the web, and that service is expected to be permanent.

Other notes as we go back to class

Co-op job interviews run for one more week, and the crowds in Needles Hall should be even bigger this week, as the first posting of the term for architecture students goes up as of noon today.

The stress management course offered by Paul Dimeck of the applied health sciences research unit will start Wednesday afternoon. Says a memo: "The ten weekly sessions will help you develop awareness of the sources of stress in your life; become aware of how your own habit patterns may be contributing to the stress in your life; learn new, adaptive patterns of responding to your life's demands." Fee for each 90-minute session is $13 for faculty, staff and students, $15 for others, and today's the last day to preregister, at ext. 3665.

The career development seminar is resuming after reading week. Tomorrow at 2:30: "Resume Writing", in Needles Hall room 1020.

The "UW Bowl" competition is set for tomorrow at 12 noon in the Student Life Centre great hall. Organizers have two teams (representing SLC turnkeys and the Federation of Students) and now all they need is an audience for a trivia game to remember.

Tomorrow at 3:30, David Rudolph of the earth sciences department will speak on "Mexico City: Can It Survive in the New Millennia?" His presentation is the next in a series sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Forum, under the general heading "The Local Village". The event takes place in Environmental Studies I room 221, and all are welcome.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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