{"id":1749,"date":"2011-12-07T11:31:01","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T19:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2011-12-07T11:31:01","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T19:31:01","slug":"bc-student-loan-amendments-help-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2011\/12\/07\/bc-student-loan-amendments-help-students\/","title":{"rendered":"BC student loan amendments help students"},"content":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER (CUP) – Two amendments have been made to the BC student loan program that look to take the pressure off underage applicants or those facing financial hardship.<\/p>\n

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Some positive changes have been made to the BC student loan program (photo by Josh Curran\/Ubyssey).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The changes were made to comply with federal rules, as the federal and provincial loan programs were amalgamated earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The first amendment allows underage students to get a loan without a signing guarantor. The second amendment eliminated non-sufficient fund fees, which are usually applied if your account is overdrawn when paying back your student loans.<\/p>\n

Despite the changes, the program still has a lot of shortcomings, according to Jeremy McElroy, president of the UBC student union, the Alma Mater Society (AMS).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great that [students] can now apply for funding independently at the age of 18, and I\u2019m glad they\u2019re no longer penalizing students for being in situations of financial need,\u201d says McElroy. \u201cBut there is still a lot of work to do with the program and we\u2019ve got all kinds of ideas for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

McElroy says the AMS is lobbying to also change the expectation that parents should be paying for students\u2019 university fees and tuition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re asking for reduction and ultimate elimination of expected parental contribution,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Another issue the AMS is tackling is how liquid assets are evaluated. \u201cRight now, if a student owns a car that is worth more than $5,000, they are expected to sell that car or have $5,000 removed from how much they\u2019re eligible for for student loans,\u201d says McElroy. \u201cThose of our students who commute in from Abbotsford, Mission, and Chilliwack, they either have to sell their car, go to school somewhere completely different, or not go to school at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brittany Manson, an international relations student on student loans at UBC, welcomes the changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first tried to apply it was kind of difficult… especially if you don\u2019t get a lot of support from your parents,\u201d says Manson. \u201cYou should be able to get the funding you need to go to university, so I think it\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER (CUP) – Two amendments have been made to the BC student loan program that look to take the pressure off underage applicants or those facing financial hardship. The changes were made to comply with federal rules, as the federal and provincial loan programs were amalgamated earlier this year. The first amendment allows underage students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-december-7-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1752,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}