Implementation of PLAR is uneven across provinces and institutions. British Columbia is considered a leader in PLAR. Over the past five years, PLAR in BC has evolved into a significant province-wide initiative. Twenty-five institutions are currently funded for PLA activities by the province and the BC Council on Admission and Transfer has approved a set of standards and guidelines for post-secondary institutions in BC.
More learners and institutions may be encouraged to use PLAR practices if more were known about the cost-benefits and effectiveness of different PLAR assessment methods. This is potentially an important area for development.
Financial aid is another potentially important tool for encouraging the participation of older students. Older students tend to have greater financial needs than younger students. According to a recent survey on student finances (EKOS, 2003), living costs rise from $650–$685 among 18-to 19-year-olds, to almost $2,000 a month among students over 25. The same survey found that age is also a predictor of the ways in which students meet their expenses. Younger students are much more likely to rely on family than older students. Only 38 percent of participants aged 26 and over reported receiving financial support from their parents, compared to 83 percent of 20 and 21 year olds (EKOS, 2003). Older students are more likely to rely on government assistance and more likely to have accumulated debt both from government and private sources.
Despite their generally high level of financial need, there is no large-scale financial aid program that is specifically tailored to the needs of adults returning to school later in life. Older adults use the same system as younger students. Because this system was designed primarily to meet the needs of students moving directly from high-school to post-secondary education, there are several components of this system that do not work particularly well for non traditional learners. The next section takes a closer look at how the financial aid works (and does not work) for adults returning to school later in life.
Canada’s student loan system is quite complex. As Junor and Usher (2004) point out, the system has “over 40 different student assistance limits (depending on a student’s province, marital status, dependants and level of study), more than 100 different loan/grant combinations within these aid limits, and hundreds of thousands of possible aid configurations once assessed need is taken into account” (p.181). However despite these differences, Junor and Usher (2004) argue that most of the country’s student assistance programs follow a single paradigm. While differences exist between provinces, they are less significant than one might expect.
One of the fundamental principles of Canada’s student assistance system is that assistance is granted based on an assessment of ‘needs’ rather than income. The needs assessment process is quite complex and involves four broad steps. What follows is a discussion of how adults are treated at each of these four steps.