Student loans should be tied to marks and more young adults should be steered toward applied learning programs at community colleges than universities to improve their prospects of getting jobs.

Those are among the recommendations of a new policy paper on improving higher education from Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak as his party prepares for an election that could come later this year.

Too many students who go to university are “back on mom and dad’s couch with no job to go to,” Hudak said Tuesday, urging community colleges to offer more three-year degree programs with applied training in various fields.

With many university graduates finding a need to go to community college for job-oriented applied training, “let’s encourage students to look at colleges first,” he added.

Financial aid for students should be tied to how well they do in their courses as a way of instilling “market discipline” and incentives to succeed, said Tory MPP Rob Leone (Cambridge), his party’s higher education critic and a former university professor with a doctorate in political science.

“We don’t want to reward mediocrity, we want to reward merit,” Leone added in presenting the white paper, which notes the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities spends $7.5 billion a year.

Funding for colleges and universities should be tied to the rate at which graduates find jobs, the policy paper states.

“We want a return on our investment,” Leone said, proposing that individual colleges and universities would be encouraged to decide how to structure student aid rules.

The Tory push comes as Premier Kathleen Wynne has re-named the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to include the word “employment” in its name, with new minister Eric Hoskins promising a renewed focus on reducing youth unemployment — which is almost double the national average.

Hudak said one-third of university graduates don’t have full-time jobs in their field two years after graduation. However, 78 per cent are employed full-time and 94 per cent have jobs of some sort.