Inuit Post-Secondary Education Program

Contact Inuit Tapariit Kanatami

New Funding Available For Inuit Students Pursuing Post-Secondary Education

June 23, 2020—Ottawa, Ontario

Inuit in Canada have access to a new source of funding to pursue post-secondary education. Funding for the Inuit Post-Secondary Education (IPSE) Program comes from an investment of $125.5 million over 10 years and $21.8 million per year thereafter announced in Budget 2019.

About three-quarters of the funding will go towards direct support for Inuit students. Most of the balance will fund regional engagement activities to draw more Inuit students into PSE and services like academic training and counselling, to help Inuit students succeed in PSE programs.

This is a new stream of funding for Inuit and supplements funding available through provincial and territorial programs. The funding is available to Inuit enrolled under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, the Nunavut Agreement, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement, regardless of their place of residency or where they are going to school.

Funding will be administered by Inuit land claims organizations in the four regions of Inuit Nunangat or their designated delivery organizations, through existing program streams. Regional allocation of the funds for 2020 and 2021 follows a model agreed upon by the ITK Board of Directors in December 2019. It amounts to $1,052,531 for the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, $4,056,291 for Nunavut, $2,024,097 for Nunavik and $963,470 for Nunatsiavut for the 2020-2021 year.

Students who are applying for financial assistance to attend PSE for the first time and returning students enrolled in programs beginning in the fall of 2020 may contact their land claims or designated delivery organizations for more information about the IPSE application process. Full contact details are available at https://www.itk.ca/inuit-post-secondary-education/.

The IPSE Program replaces and exceeds the funding available to Inuit under the federal Post-Secondary Students Support Program (PSSSP). Those funds have historically been accessed through First Nations Administrators operating in southern centres. There will be a period of overlap between the two programs, ensuring no change in funding to current Inuit PSSSP recipients until September 2020, at which time they may apply through regional funding channels.

The initiative is part of a broader vision of the Inuit Post-Secondary Education Program, developed by Inuit and the Government of Canada, building upon the ambitions of the Inuit Crown Partnership Committee. The goal of the Strategy is to increase Inuit PSE attainment rates to a level consistent with the non-Indigenous populatio