Canada debt loan student

Scholarship helping IT students stay on course - the Information Technology Association of Canada and Information Technology Institute offer scholarships

When Ashton Vaz graduated from the University of Toronto's neurophysiology program in May, 1997, he wanted to continue his studies at the Information Technology Institute (ITI) so he could apply artificial intelligence to business applications such as data mining.

Although he was accepted into ITI last May, however, he wasn't sure if he could afford the tuition.

Vaz, 23, already owed more than $15,000 in Ontario Student Assistance Plan (OSAP) loans, and when he tried to get a loan to study at ITI he was out of luck.

"I kept running around to all these banks, working two or three jobs trying to save up money to be able to go to ITI, and OSAP only covered about $6,000, so I had difficulty getting (a bank) loan."

Vaz' saving grace was the Young Navigators Scholarship Program, which awarded him a $15,000 scholarship toward his ITI tuition this past December.

Young Navigators, which was announced in November 1997, receives funding from ITI, the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) and the former Stentor telephone companies. It operates three programs designed to help young people who are interested in IT careers.

The Entrepreneur program, which targets youth under the age of 30, will award 10 working capital grants of $10,000 this year. Finalists will be announced at the end of this month.

The other two programs are the Youth IT and Skills Recognition Program, which targets elementary and secondary school students, and the Scholarship Program, which provides funding to two students at each of ITI's five campuses in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Moncton and Halifax.

Recipients, who must be university graduates under the age of 25, are assessed on the basis of their computer literacy, a demonstrated interest in IT, an interview with a panel of judges and their financial need.

"I think it's very hard for students in general going to university," says Barry Clavir, Young Navigators' founder and executive director. "The tuition fees are rising almost exponentially, and for an average family, it's next to impossible to keep up."

He adds the high placement rate from schools such as ITI and high salaries expected by IT professionals are sometimes not enough to compensate for the costs of programs at schools like ITI.

"If you had already assumed a huge amount of debt (before you went to a school like ITI), it may be very, very difficult for you to assume another debt," Clavir adds.

This has been the experience of students such as Shannon Roy, a 25-year- old Ryerson Polytechnic University graduate who is studying at ITI under a Young Navigators scholarship.

"Like most people, I came out of Ryerson with a big student loan debt," Roy says. "Although I secured financing to go to ITI, that scholarship had made my life amazing, because now, when I get out, I'll be able to concentrate on making use of my skills, and not being worried so much about the dollars. My mother is co-signing a loan with me for my tuition, and she is ecstatic that no one is going to repossess her home if I can't repay my loan."

Roy, who studied architectural design at Ryerson from 1992 until 1996, became interested in an IT profession when he worked for two design firms after he graduated.

"Despite the fact that I was doing design, I was doing a lot of it on computer, and that's what sort of led me to IT," he says.

"The firm that I worked for right out of school was very computer- literate and had a very strong mandate to stay current with the new technology, and I sort of quickly became the person everyone asked what was going on with the system when it would crash."