Three Academy of Learning campuses in Ontario are currently challenging a government move to revoke their access to student financial aid.. Court filings suggest that third parties may have completed corsework for students to illegally secure funding.
The $219 million OSAP anomaly
The scale of funding flowing into a handful of private institutions has triggered an alarm for provincial regulators. According to data obtained by The Canadian Press, approximately 14 ,800 students across three Academy of Learning franchise locations received more than $219 million in Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) grants during the 2024-25 period.
To put this figure in perspective, the same data shows that students across all publicly funded colleges in Ontario qualified for roughly $385 million in grants during that same year. The fact that three private franchise locations captured more than half the total funding of the entire public college system suggests a massive disproportion in how aid was distributed.
Six-minute exams and 211 IP addresses
The provincial government's decision to cut funding was based on inspection reports that detail systemic academic irregularities. In one instance at a Brampton location,inspectors found a student who completed a final exam for a business course in just six minutes. Another student at the same site allegedly finished all modules and quizzes for a business writing essentials course in under 15 minutes.
Digital footprints further suggest that students were not the ones doing the work. Court records reveal that a single student at the North York campus had their account accessed from at least 211 different IP addresses. Furthermore, at the Bay Street location, 39 out of 42 student files examined by inspectors showed IP addresses shared with other students, all of whom had been referred by the same recruiter.
Career Colleges Ontario's warning on 600 per cent growth
This situation appears to be part of a broader trend of "grant farming" within the private education sector.. In January 2025, Career Colleges Ontario (CCO) alerted the government to 10 institutions that showed suspicious growth, with some seeing OSAP applications jump by 500 to 600 per cent over two years while other schools remained flat.
Kate Bartz, the executive director of Career Colleges Ontario, suggested that certain schools used third-party agents to lure students. These agents allegedly offered to move students to institutions that would falsely report attendance to ensure OSAP disbursements continued . This indicates a predatory ecosystem where the primary goal is the extraction of government funds rather than the delivery of education.
Minister Nolan Quinn's Aug. 1 deadline and the judicial review
Following these findings, Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn notified five career colleges on May 1 that their OSAP eligibility would terminate on Aug. 1. The three Academy of Learning locations, which operate under a single parent company, have since applied for a judicial review, arguing that Minister Quinn acted unreasonably and lacked the power to predetermine their eligibility.
Several critical details remain unverified or missing from the current record. While the Academy of Learning claims to have implemented "corrective actions," the reports do not specify what these measures are or if they address the IP address anomalies. Additionally, the identity of the specific recruiter linked to the Bay Street IP clusters remains undisclosed, leaving it unclear if this was an intenal failure or an external fraud ring.
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