Joanne Mendes keeps her textbooks stacked beside a dish rack in the cramped kitchen she shares with four other students in Toronto’s east end. “There’s no room for a desk,” she says, laughing softly, “but I make it work.” A third-year sociology major and the first in her family to attend university, Joanne’s laughter fades when she talks about the cuts to Ontario’s student assistance program that upended her life last year. Once relying on grants from OSAP to cover rent and food, she’s now juggling two part-time jobs—late shifts at a grocery store and weekend housekeeping—to stay enrolled. “Just going to class feels like a privilege now.”
When the provincial government rolled back grant portions of OSAP and lifted the tuition freeze, students like Joanne found themselves at a heartbreaking crossroads: education or survival. The policy didn’t account for lived realities—for students with learning disabilities needing extra time, or for BIPOC students contending with systemic barriers. “By the time midterms hit, I was already burned out,” Joanne says. “I had no energy left for the thing I was here to do: learn.” She talks about panic attacks before exams, meals skipped to meet rent deadlines, and the quiet guilt of not being able to send money home like she used to.
Joanne’s story echoes across campuses, a ripple turning into a wave. Mutual aid collectives run by students have sprung up in response—GoFundMe campaigns for rent, communal fridges, even textbook swaps on Discord. “Sometimes the only support is each other,” Joanne nods. But burnout creeps in hard. Campus counseling centers report surging waitlists, some exceeding three months. “We’re getting anxious kids collapsing in class,” one student counselor, who wished to remain anonymous, noted. “They’re not just tired—they’re terrified.”
This storm is not hitting everyone equally. First-generation students are dropping out at rising rates. Disabled students are seeing accommodations decline while workloads stay high. Indigenous and Black students face intensified stress from balancing identity and advocacy. “It’s hard enough to fight for your spot in a lecture hall,” Joanne says, “without also having to fight for your right to be here at all.” In the face of these realities, many are turning protest into routine—monthly rallies, petitions to administration, and teach-ins organized in dorm lounges by students who’ve barely slept.
Behind every budget line is a face like Joanne’s—a student folding store flyers at midnight between chapters of social theory. Her ambition hasn’t dulled; if anything, it’s sharpened. “I want to work in community housing advocacy,” she says. “Because I know what it’s like not to belong, even when you’ve worked so hard to be here.” Her story is one of resilience, but it shouldn’t be necessary. Education shouldn’t be a test of endurance. As policy-makers tighten one belt after another in the name of austerity, students like Joanne quietly shoulder what those in power refuse to carry: the actual cost of learning.
